BILBAO.- The Guggenheim Bilbao presents Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, an exhibition that looks back at the work of one of the most eminent figure in the art of our time, the unmistakable Jeff Koons. This chronological, coherent retrospective of Koons’s artistic output was organized by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Centre National d’Art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Over the past four decades, Jeff Koons has developed a singular, distinctive, innovative oeuvre, becoming one of contemporary art’s most prominent figures. Critics and audiences alike have been surprised by the unexpected concepts that Koons has presented at different exhibitions throughout his career.

At this exhibition’s Spanish debut, the public will be able to enjoy a comprehensive survey of the artist’s work, which speaks to us of self-acceptance, appreciation of the world around us, and the affirmation of being through art. It is an exhortation to live in this world as though it were our first day on the earth.

Art as Wake-Up Call
Rejecting the aura of inaccessibility that surrounds other contemporary works of art, his instantly recognizable creations appeal to the general public and draw on countless art historical sources, such as Surrealism, Pop Art and Dadaism.

Koons has a unique style that allows seemingly contradictory concepts to coexist harmoniously in his work. Life and death, past and present, sexuality and innocence, luxury and austerity, eternal and new, public and private, industrial and handcrafted, feminine and masculine are fused through the iconography and materials used in his creations, whose painstaking finishes are achieved with the help of his studio Koons uses art as a wake-up call, a driving force of social change. The false luxury of some of his pieces— achieved by using industrial materials that are made to look deceptively lavish—and his references to wellknown archetypes make viewers feel comfortable with their own history. In the artist’s own words: “I feel incredibly strong when I make my artwork. And so art for me is about increasing my own perimeters in life. And hopefully my work gives viewers a sense of possibilities for their own futures as much as it does for mine.”

Inflatables, Pre-New, The New
Jeff Koons moved to New York in 1976 and began working on sculptural objects that reflected city life. Many of his early works from this period are on display in Gallery 205, where the exhibition begins.

His Inflatables , simple vinyl objects bought at discount shops on 14th Street in Manhattan, are reminiscent of Dali’s Surrealism and, most of all, of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. Thanks to the artist Ed Paschke, Koons became more aware of using source material from the everyday world. These pieces with dual significance—the male and female flower, for example, in Inflatable Flowers (Short Pink , Tall Yellow) (1979)— contain references to the art of Donald Judd and especially to the mirrors of Robert Smithson, which Koons uses as surfaces that multiply space and, by extension, social reality, while also drawing spectators into it by showing them their own reflections in the piece.

In order to construct these three-dimensional still lifes, Koons altered the integrity of the devices by attaching them to fluorescent tubes. These pieces allude to the work of Dan Flavin and to storefront windows. One example of this body of work is Teapot (1979) made of a utensil.

In The New, Koons presented brand-new vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, which he placed inside acrylic cases under fluorescent lights, a method reminiscent of Dan Flavin’s Minimalist creations. The New Museum of Contemporary Art invited Koons to create this series for its 5th Avenue front window.

Koons selects his appliances carefully based on their anthropomorphic qualities, viewing them as quasi- lifelike machines that inflate and deflate like human beings when they breathe. The shapes and titles of these works reflect dichotomies such as male and female, dry and wet, or life and death, as is the case in New Shelton Wet/Drys Triple decker (1981).

The lithographs in this series come from billboards like New! New Too! (1983) that Koons found and recontextualized, reflecting his interest in advertising and consumerism.

Equilibrium
The works that make up the series Equilibrium are on display in Gallery 206. These pieces are from Jeff Koons’s first gallery solo exhibition in 1985, which addressed the theme of personal and social equilibrium. For this series, the artist created several bronze sculptures representing elements related to survival, like Lifeboat (1985) and Aqualung (1985). By casting them in bronze, Koons made these objects seem immortal, full of air and life, and yet the weight of the metal makes it impossible for them to float as they are supposed to, turning them into deadly devices that underscore the impossibility of achieving a state of equilibrium between life and death.

Jeff Koons also sought to achieve balance in works like Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank ( Dr. J Silver Series) (1985), which features basketballs floating inside water tanks in a delicate equilibrium that will eventually be upset by temperature fluctuations or vibrations. To design these pieces, Koons worked in consultation with several physicists, including Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman.

The parallel between these works and life’s precarious equilibrium is similar to the parallel Koons strove to convey with a selection of Nike posters that depicted basketball stars as models of success and social equilibrium. The artist acquired the rights to images like Dr. Dunkenstein (1985) and exhibited them unaltered, revealing how the perpetuation of certain roles serves to stabilize the established social equilibrium.

Luxury and Degradation
The tour continues in Gallery 207 with the series Luxury and Degradation . Koons unveiled this series in 1986, aiming to show how advertising techniques and marketing campaigns for alcoholic drinks served to perpetuate roles in society. The artist picked up on one significant difference: the ads intended for audiences of more modest means had a more explicit message, whereas those destined for the other, higher end of the spectrum tended to be more abstract, thereby perpetuating social immobility and stereotypes.

In Luxury and Degradation, Koons included, along with works like Hennessy, The Civilized Way to Lay Down the Law (1986), a series of objects and utensils associated with alcohol consumption. He endowed these objects with fake luxury by giving an ordinary material like stainless steel a shiny, sumptuous finish. The bourbon in the Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train (1986) exemplifies typical American culture, while the train itself takes us back to the days when the West was won; and the Baccarat Crystal Set (1986) is associated with European luxury and upper middle-class tastes.

Statuary, Banality
The exhibition continues in Gallery 206 with the Banality series, in preparation for which Koons visited several European workshops specialized in religious woodcarvings and decorative porcelain figurines. Koons commissioned them to produce a series of sculptures of iconic images in contemporary society, such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988)—whose pyramidal composition echoes that of Michelangelo’s Pieta—and others referenced from commercial postcards, objects in airport giftshops or reminiscent of religious imagery.

These works, which the critics described as overly saccharine, once again managed to harmoniously mesh contrasting readymade elements: eroticism and innocence, contemporary pop culture and elitist baroque culture. Koons also used these pieces to introduce a new media strategy, unveiling Banality in three cities at the same time: New York, Chicago, and Cologne.

The exhibition then moves to a series of stainless-steel, shiny sculptures that Koons presented in 1986 at Ileana Sonnabend’s prestigious SoHo gallery under the title Statuary . These pieces reflect archetypes and images of various historical figures, like the life-size bust Louis XIV (1986), the symbol of absolute monarchy and of art made to order for a privileged few, and Bob Hope (1986), a 20th- century mass-culture icon. All of them are "representations of representations" that have been stripped of any explicit reference to the original sources.

Statuary includes the inflatable rabbit—one of the earliest and best known of Koons’s creations, related with his work from the 1970s. The stainless-steel inflatable, always full of air and in perfect condition, is an archetype with multiple interpretations: erotic, if associated with the Playboy bunny, and innocent, if read as a depiction of the guileless Easter bunny.

Kiepenkerl
In Gallery 201 we can see Koons’s first installation in a public space, Kiepenkerl , which he created for the art event Skulptur Projekte Münster (Germany). The piece is made of polished stainless steel, lending it the false appearance of luxury. It is based on a bronze sculpture, erected in 1898, that stood in a square in the heart of the city and had strong historical and political connotations: it was used by the Nazi propaganda machine as a symbol of the city’s resistance during World War II.

Kiepenkerl depicts a peddler who traveled from town to town, carrying his wares and sharing news as he went. Koons’s Kiepenkerl is the same size as the original, bringing the past up to date and using the same resources as in his previous two series. However, the difficulties involved in manufacturing this sculpture, which was damaged during the casting process and required major repairs, marked a turning point in Koons’s relationship with the readymade, as the Kiepenkerl experience freed him from the need to maintain his found objects intact.

Made in Heaven In 1989, the Whitney Museum of American Art invited Jeff Koons to create a billboard for Image World , a group exhibition that explored the relationship between art and the media. The result was the work Made in Heaven , on display in Gallery 203, which remains one of Koons’s most controversial series due to its explicit nature.

Koons decided to create a huge advertisement featuring him and Ilona Staller (better known as Cicciolina, whom he would later marry) as the costars of the film Made in Heaven , which was never actually made but the themes of which he continued with his series of the same name. In various oil inks on canvas works, the couple appeared as a contemporary Adam and Eve, depicted in sexual poses and surrounded by symbols of fidelity and love, of human nature and domestication. Lambasted by both Italian and American critics at the time, Made in Heaven is a radical exercise in self-affirmation that Koons invites us to share.

A few months later the artist returned to the series, working with new materials like glass and marble at workshops in Murano and Pietrasanta, Italy, and referencing important works from art history by masters such as Bernini, Courbet, Houdon, and Manet.

Puppy
Puppy (1992) is one of Koons’s most iconic and beloved creations. Standing in the square just outside the Museum, the work welcomes visitors to the Guggenheim Bilbao.

The first version of this enormous flower-strewn West Highland white terrier was temporarily installed in 1992 in the great courtyard of Waldeck Castle in the German town of Bad Arolsen, near Kassel, where Documenta IX was being held. That first version, which stood 11 meters tall, was made of wood and was dismantled at the end of the project.

Koons later created a larger rendition with a steel frame, which he exhibited at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1997, the work was acquired for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection and given a permanent home in front of the museum building. In this piece, whose theme ties in with his earlier series Banality and Made in Heaven , the flowering of the plants is key because it entails an uneven, riotous pattern of growth that gives the work a life of its own, alluding to the power of life in both its physical and spiritual dimensions.

Easyfun; Easyfun-Ethereal
Gallery 202 is home to a series that Koons debuted while simultaneously working on the Celebration series. Easyfun is a series of cartoon animal silhouettes made from colorful mirrored surfaces, irresistibly attractive objects, like his 1999 work Walrus (Blue Green) , that distort the observer’s reflection. Koons accompanied these reflective pieces with his first three oil paintings, including Loopy (1999), which resemble photorealist collages, as they incorporate images cut out of brochures, advertisements, magazines, and personal photos, and clearly allude to the work of other artists like John Baldessari, Jackson Pollock, and James Rosenquist. These paintings were soon followed by the Easyfun - Ethereal series, which included pieces like Junkyard (2002). In this series the process became more complex and the layers of images were processed using computer software and transferred to canvas.

Celebration
In 1994, an invitation to design a calendar inspired Jeff Koons to embark on one of the longest, most technically challenging series of his entire career, Celebration , on display in Gallery 208. For this new project, he took photographs and collected images related to holidays and memorable events, looking for easily recognizable archetypes to illustrate every month of the year. His research soon grew more ambitious, leading to a total of 16 paintings and 20 sculptures whose complexity required the artist to spend years working on and researching the processes and materials involved and their possible alloys.

These sculptures include polyethylene pieces, like Cat on a Clothesline (Yellow) (1994-2001), and large mirror-polished stainless steel sculptures, like Balloon Dog (Magenta) (1994-2000). The puckers, folds, and curves of these small inflatable toys are reproduced on a much larger scale in durable, bright colors, created by applying layer upon layer of transparent color coating with innovative techniques developed by the artist after years of research and consultations with experts.

The hyperreal paintings in this series are inspired by festive events such as birthday parties or children’s playthings. In the first canvases, these motifs occupy the center of the composition, which melts away into the reflective glints of a metallic background, as is the case in Boy with Pony (1995-2008). In his later paintings, the toys form a hyperreal landscape more in keeping with the world of advertising.

The Museum’s outdoor terrace is home to another important part of this series: Tulips (1995-2004), a piece from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection on permanent exhibition to Bilbao’s passersby.

Popeye, Hulk Elvis, Antiquity
Gallery 105 includes some of Jeff Koons’s most recent work. The Popeye series, named after the famous fictional sailor, is still in progress today. This pop icon, a proletarian symbol of triumph over adversity, and his cartoon companions, including his beloved Olive Oyl, are the stars of these paintings and sculptures.

Koons created sculptures like Chainlink (2003) by combining metal casts of inflatable pool toys with mass-produced ladders, chairs, and fences. The paintings in the series, like Olive Oyl (2003), include images of these sculptures among their myriad layers, which were conceptualized first in Photoshop and later transferred to canvas and hand-painted in oil. The composition is complex and, at the same time, extremely flat: the images are simple, and yet so profuse that it is difficult to identify them individually.

Gallery 105 also houses Hulk Elvis , a new series Koons began in 2004 in which the Incredible Hulk poses as Elvis Presley from the publicity still for the Western film Flaming Star , one of the singer’s best-known images, immortalized in Andy Warhol’s screenprints. Both Elvis and the Hulk are characterized by an exaggerated masculinity, although each has a conflictive dual nature. The Hulk leads a double life just as Elvis Presley does in the legendary movie. Koons conjoins a bronze inflatable toy version of the superhero with real objects to create a modified readymade. In addition to sculptures, Koons also created complex paintings for this series, like Dutch Couple (2007). These paintings feature multiple layers and an increasingly prominent use of Ben-Day dots, an obvious nod to the comic book universe and to the artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Koons also plunged into an arduous research process to discover how 3D-scanning techniques could be used to make replicas of iconic objects from history that he considers altered readymades. A case in point is Koons’s Liberty Bell (2006-14). The original Liberty Bell, a quintessential symbol of freedom and independence in the United States, has been cast several times and has a long history of replicas, the object of Koons’s emulation.

In Antiquity, Jeff Koons reviews themes of fertility, standards of feminine beauty, and life energy through the ages. Begun in 2008, this series includes sculptures which depict prehistoric and Greco- Roman deities as well as paintings of a more contemporary, photo-realist type of feminine beauty, like that of actress Gretchen Mol posing as the famous pinup Bettie Page in Antiquity 3 (2009-11).

In this series, Koons links his artwork to touchstones from the history of art and further explores the ever-evolving role of reproduction and simulacra of cultural objects in art history. For instance, his sculptures exactly reproduce statuettes, such as a porcelain souvenir referencing a 19th-century copy of a Roman Venus Callipyge from the Archaeological Museum in Naples, itself a copy of an older Greek work, that Koons transforms into his colossal stainless-steel turquoise Metallic Venus , to which he adds real flowers. In this vein, Koons’s paintings reference seminal works from art history, mixing contemporary deities with satyrs and classical beauties. In his Antiquity series paintings, Koons places a reference to Courbet’s Origin of the World on the forefront. He also pays a tribute to Muhammad Ali, who contributed his own drawings to a project on which the two collaborated.

Gazing Ball
Gallery 105 also includes the Gazing Ball series, begun in 2013. These spheres, which some cultures associate with divination, protection, and the afterlife, were first used in Victorian gardens, and in many American lawns or gardens they have become familiar ornaments set out to welcome neighbors, while the surface also "compresses" the scenery around them.

In Koons’s works, the bright blue gazing balls made of hand-blown glass capture the reflection of everything happening around the viewer. The pristine white plaster objects or figures become mere vessels or stages for exhibiting the spheres, even though some of them take the form of powerful figures such as Gazing Ball (Farnese Hercules) (2013). These plaster casts, flawless replicas of their prototypes down to the very last detail, are opaque and still, and yet they glow with a supernatural perfection.