Jeff Koons

New York City

David Zwirner proudly presents Gazing Ball, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition with Jeff Koons.

Gazing Ball takes its name from the mirrored spherical ornaments frequently found on lawns, gardens, and patios around Koons’s childhood home in Pennsylvania. Their unique visual qualities allow viewers to see around corners while absorbing them and their entire surroundings within one image. Koons has made use of highly reflective curved surfaces in his sculptures from the mid-1980s onwards, and the gazing balls can be seen to echo the consummate attention to detail and materiality found throughout his oeuvre.

The artist notes on the series: “I’ve thought about the gazing ball for decades. I’ve wanted to show the affirmation, generosity, sense of place, and joy of the senses that the gazing ball symbolizes. The Gazing Ball series is based in transcendence. The realization of one’s mortality is abstract thought and from there, one is able to have a concept of the external world, one’s family, community, and a vaster dialogue with humankind beyond the present. The Gazing Ball series is based on the philosopher’s gaze, starting with transcendence through the senses, but directing one’s vision (the philosopher’s gaze) towards the eternal through pure form and ideas.”

Jeff Koons

David Zwirner

May 8 – June 29, 2013
525 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
USA

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