Jeff Koons: At the Ashmolean

Sir Norman Rosenthal & Dr Alexander Sturgis

Softcover | 9.86 x 1.47 x 26.44 cm | 72 pp

Ashmolean Museum | 2019 | 9781910807293

Curated by Koons himself, together with guest curator Norman Rosenthal, the show featured seventeen important works, fourteen of which had never been exhibited in the UK before. They span the artist’s entire career and his most well-known series, including Equilibrium, Statuary, Banality, Antiquity and his recent Gazing Ball sculptures and paintings.

The exhibition sought to provoke a conversation between his creations and the history of art and ideas with which his work engages. From his earliest works Koons has explored the ‘ready-made’ and ‘appropriated image’, using unadulterated found objects and creating painstaking replicas of ancient sculptures and Old Master paintings which almost defy belief in their craftsmanship and precision. Throughout his career Koons has pushed at the boundaries of contemporary art practice, stretching the limits of what is possible.