Skarstedt London is showcasing a selection of five mural-sized paintings created by Jeff Koons between 2001 and 2013. The art on view was first commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in 2000, and features works from the American artist’s Easyfun-Ethereal, Popeye and Antiquity series’.
Colorful and chaotic, Koons’ oil paintings draw on the history of American advertisements, purposefully conflating images tied to mass consumerism, such as food packaging and inflatable children’s toys, with more blatantly sexual subject matter — from bare feet, hands and bikinis to ancient Greco-Roman sculptures of a phallus. “My Easyfun-Ethereal paintings are very layered,” Koons explained in the past. “My interest has always been to create art that can change with any culture or society viewing it. When I look at the paintings and realize all the historical references, it’s as if, for a moment, all ego is lost to meaning.”
Koons’ multilayered compositions reference the history of art, from Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art with the banality of American ads and branding lexicon — creating a bridge between time periods and the role in which beauty and desire run concurrent through each medium. “You know, all of life is… just about being able to find amazement in things,” Koons said in a 2002 interview. The exhibition is currently on view at Skarstedt London until May 25.
Skarstedt
8 Bennet St,
St. James’s, London SW1A 1RP