This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/3/2023
Jeff Koons Original 1985 Snorkel (Generic) Sculpture
Bronze
Dimensions: H14.5 x W5 x D 1.75 Inches ( H36.83 x W12.7 x D4.45 cm)
Width measured at the largest point.
Created in 1985, Jeff Koons gave Sandy Artus this unfinished casting (no patina, which is the finished coating) when she worked at Tallix
Created at Tallix Foundry during the production process of the original artwork edition. Artwork is unfinished and, as such, is not an authorized artwork by Jeff Koons, but an unfinished casting of an artwork by Jeff Koons that, according to Koons’s studio manager, should have been destroyed but was not. According to the prior owner, who worked at Tallix, it was a gift from Jeff Koons. In either event, it is an authentic unfinished casting of Jeff Koons’s 1985 Snorkel (Generic) sculpture which has survived as an historical artifact.
The edition Koons created of the snorkel was tiny, with 3 plus the one of the artist proofs. This piece is the fifth, the "unfinished" snorkel.
An enigmatic, seductive sculpture from the artist's watershed Equilibrium series, Jeff Koons's Snorkel (Generic) transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. The work is a meticulous process of making a simulacrum cast in glimmering bronze from a snorkel mould. Originally, the Snorkel (Generic) was part of Koon's solo debut held that same year at International With Monument, a gallery in New York City's East Village.
The Equilibrium series has since been recognised as a pivotal moment in Koons's career, during which his practice embraced the innovative engineering which would come to characterise so many of his subsequent works. Snorkel (Generic) is part of an edition of three, and sculptures from this series were exhibited as part of Koons's 1993 touring retrospective held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
An incredible find, with the other editions selling for an excess of $200,000, is an opportunity to own one of Jeff Koons's most famous works that may never come again.
"Koons manipulates objects into metaphorical embodiments of society's dysfunctions. This poetics of objects recalls Jasper Johns' cast-bronze beer cans, in which an ordinary object becomes endowed with a surplus of meaning, and the surrealist tactic of juxtaposing unexpected elements, as in Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered teacup."
Daniela Salvioni, 'Jeff Koons's Poetics of Class', in Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1992, p. 20
Comes with a letter of provenance and a Gotta Have Rock and Roll Certificate of Authenticity.\