DOHA.- Qatar Museums opened to the public Jeff Koons: Lost in America at the QM Gallery ALRIWAQ, the expansive exhibition space located in Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) Park. On view through 31 March 2022 and organised by renowned curator Massimiliano Gioni, Koons’s first exhibition in the Gulf region provides a unique view into his exceptional career as one of the best-known contemporary artists, whose work bridges Pop, Minimalism and the readymade. Jeff Koons: Lost in America is part of #QatarCreates 2021, two weeks of cultural exchange, dialogue and collaboration at the forefront of art, architecture, fashion, design, and digital culture, as well as the Qatar-United States 2021 Year of Culture, an international cultural exchange designed to deepen understanding between nations and their people.
Lost in America presents a portrait of American culture as seen through Koons’s autobiography, beginning with his childhood in suburban Pennsylvania. The exhibition features more than sixty artworks drawn from Koons’s four-decade-long career and is divided into 16 galleries, each introduced by an autobiographical text by the artist, emphasising his memories, influences and fascination with American visual culture. Conceived as an expansive self-portrait, the exhibition also includes sculptures and paintings with mesmerising, mirrored surfaces that reflect the viewers and call attention to notions of self-transformation and becoming.
Sheikha Reem Al Thani, Acting Deputy CEO of Exhibitions and Marketing, Qatar Museums, said: “Qatar Museums is pleased to organise and present Jeff Koons: Lost in America, providing our community and visitors to Doha with access to Koons's first exhibition in the Gulf region. Part of Qatar Museums' mission is to encourage cultural exchange and dialogue through the presentations of many of the world’s most influential artists. This exhibition—a highlight of Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture—offers a unique view of Koons's artworks that are an often-playful reflection of his observations and commentary on American culture.”
“I am honoured as an American artist to represent my country during the Year of Culture between Qatar and the United States. I have had amazing opportunities over the last two decades to visit Qatar, seeing its sites and cultural institutions and meeting some of its people,” stated Jeff Koons. “For me, it’s a dream come true for this exhibition to be part of the cultural exchange between Qatar and the United States. I am very grateful to Qatar Museums for inviting me to participate.”
Exhibition curator Massimiliano Gioni, who serves as artistic director of the New Museum in New York, said: “With his aesthetics of plenty and his dreams of transformation and acceptance, Jeff Koons has been creating a strange mirage of America. This will appear even more exciting when seen in Doha against the background of a city that has taken the fascination with the new to vertiginous heights.”
Some of Koons’s best-known works are represented from series such as The New (1980–87), Banality (1988), Celebration (1994–), Popeye (2002–2013) and Antiquity (2008–), alongside more recent works shown for the first time during this special exhibition. In Koons’s paintings and sculptures, including some of the artist’s most iconic pieces such as Rabbit (1986), Balloon Dog (1994–2000) and Play-Doh (1994–2014), everyday objects and industrial materials are transformed into engaging artworks that pose questions about desire and hope, the self and transcendence, individuality, and the masses.
Throughout his career, Jeff Koons has radically transformed the world of art, forging new relationships between the avant-garde and mass culture, while developing new paradigms for the role of the artist in the age of hyper-communication. He shares a preoccupation with American popular culture with many of his predecessors, who include artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, and with peers such as Robert Gober, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, Charles Ray and Cindy Sherman.
