"I wanted to do something without being illustrative. I wanted it to show inclusion, transformation and grace." - Jeff Koons on "Radial Champs"
Koons is one of the most influential living fine artists today. He is an icon of the modern art world. His meteoric rise in the 1980s was due to his part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated age.
With his stated intention to communicate with the masses, Koons draws from the visual language of mass media and advertising, and the entertainment industry. Testing the limits between high and low culture, his sculptural menagerie includes Plexiglas-encased Hoover vacuum cleaners, basketballs floating in glass aquariums, porcelain homages to Michael Jackson and the Pink Panther.
Koons' frequent goal is to present common objects as is. "When I'm working with an object I always have to give the greatest consideration not to alter the object physically or even psychologically. I try to reveal a certain aspect of the object's personality. I'm placing the object in a context or material which will enhance a specific personality trait within the object. The soul of the object must be maintained ..."
Koons has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions - at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago amongst others.
