Not many modern-day artists carry a cult status and global prominence quite like that of Jeff KOONS. His star has been burning bright for almost half a century, introducing audiences to new ways of seeing, not just art, but the world around them. On the outside playfully imaginative, KOONS’ works are a vessel for grand existentialist ideas. Through everyday objects and pop culture insignia, he comments on consumerism, aesthetics and the human experience. THE SKATEROOM is proud to reunite with the American genius for the second time in a brand new limited skateboard art collection.
On Being Alive
The editions each depict a classic artwork from Jeff KOONS’ masterful oeuvre. The New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Doubledecker Skateboard presents a doubledecker vacuum cleaner sculpture from the artist’s The New series. The New created a confrontation between the viewer and the external object. The object can continue to display its brand newness – its integrity of its birth, and where the individual has to participate to develop their integrity; the dialogue is who is better prepared to enter into the realm of the eternal. The work also has existential and philosophical references, such as the duality of Kierkegaard’sEither/Or and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
KOONS focuses on three basketballs floating at their mid-point in a glass tank half-filled with water in his Three Ball 50/50 Tank (Spalding Dr. JK Silver Series, Wilson Supershot) Skateboard. In his Equilibrium series, Koons created both total equilibrium tanks and 50/50 tanks. Both representing ultimate states of being. Presented as a triptych, we see three basketballs floating exactly half in and half out of the water in the middle of the skateboard. Existentialism is being highlighted also in the Equilibrium series.
Finally, an image of KOONS’ porcelain sculpture Pink Panther appears on the bright pink diptych. The Banality series (1988) artworks were metaphors for the viewer’s cultural guilt and shame and the works addressed how to overcome it. Koons was communicating that through acceptance one can be empowered. The Pink Panther Skateboard diptych sculpture represents a voluptuous pin-up woman embracing the Pink Panther. The work explores sensuality, materialism, taste, desire, and the abundance of overlapping images within our culture.
