“Pool toys are inflatable, just like people. Inflatables really are metaphors for the continuation of life.”

—Jeff Koons

Executed between 2007 and 2011, Jeff Koons’ Dolphin Taz Trashcan is a masterful orchestration of polychromed aluminum masquerading as an assemblage of feather-light plastic toys. Suspended from a red steel chain, a sleek blue dolphin pool float appears to thrust through a bright blue Looney Tunes-themed swim ring while being enmeshed in a cold, industrial metal trashcan. At first glance, the familiar forms conjure nostalgia, evoking the carefree summers of suburban America, where inflatable toys populate backyard pools and communal swimming areas. Yet beneath its buoyant, playful exterior, the work reveals deeper tensions—between innocence and entrapment, consumerism and transformation, illusion and reality.

“My work is a support system for people to feel good about themselves.”

—Jeff Koons

Part of Koons’ Popeye series Dolphin Taz Trashcan epitomizes his signature fusion of hyperrealism and conceptual rigor. Launched in 2002, the Popeye series comprises both sculptures and paintings that juxtapose brightly colored pool inflatables with stark, unaltered utilitarian objects, forming whimsical compositions that explore notions of self-acceptance and transcendence. Though named after the cartoon character Popeye, the works do not always depict him directly. Rather, they share a common visual language of vibrant vitality, aquatic themes, and a deliberate retrospective approach to image-making. Dolphin Taz Trashcan epitomizes the core concerns of the Popeye series—Koons’ fascination with the interplay between childhood innocence and adult sexuality, the intersection of high and low culture, and the reinvention of kitsch within the avant-garde. More profoundly, it underscores the ephemeral nature of life itself, hinting at both buoyancy and entrapment, playfulness and restriction. The inflatables, though appearing soft and weightless, are meticulously cast in metal, deceiving the eye with their trompe-l’oeil precision. The unaltered trashcan, an ordinary utilitarian object, acts as both a literal and symbolic container, reinforcing themes of restriction and exclusion. Through its surreal juxtaposition, the sculpture distills Koons’ ongoing dialogue with materiality, mass culture, and the complex psychological undertones hidden beneath the surface of the everyday.

Inflatables and the Evolution of Koons’ Sculptural Practice

Koons’ engagement with inflatable objects dates back to 1978, shortly after his arrival in New York City, when he scoured discount shops on the Lower East Side for vinyl toys that he would present alongside mirrors, “parodying the chaste rationality of minimalist sculptures.”ⁱ His 1986 Rabbit, a cast metal replica of a balloon bunny, furthered this exploration, leading to the Celebration series of the 1990s, from which his iconic Balloon Dog emerged. The Popeye sculptures represent a continuation of this trajectory, transforming ephemeral pool inflatables into heavy, meticulously painted aluminum objects that blur the line between artifice and reality.

In Dolphin Taz Trashcan, Koons heightens this deception. The dolphin and swim ring, though appearing lightweight and pliable, are rigid, hard-cast metal. Every seam and ripple mimics the real texture of inflatable plastic, yet their cold, solid nature defies expectation. The trashcan, a functional, industrial object, remains unaltered—a ready-made that contrasts with the hyper realistic falsity of the cast inflatables. This dynamic recalls Marcel Duchamp’s assisted readymades, particularly Bicycle Wheel, 1913, where a familiar object, decontextualized, gains new meaning. Like Duchamp, Koons manipulates material perception, forcing the viewer to question the authenticity of what they see.

“As Warhol did before him, Koons uses Popeye as an American hero, an instantly recognizable everyman deeply rooted in popular consciousness. Koons also further explores the realm of the Duchampian readymade, casting inflatables – except, of course, that there is nothing ‘ready made’ in any of Koons’s sculptures : quite the opposite, everything is ‘ultra-made’.” 

—Joachim Pissarro

Consumer Culture and the Suburban Myth

At first glance, the work appears to celebrate the disposable, mass-produced objects of American suburban life. The inflatable dolphin and Looney Tunes swim ring evoke childhood summers spent in backyard pools, scenes of carefree leisure. Yet beneath this cheerful surface lies a more cynical reading. The dolphin’s fixed smile and the grinning face of Taz, emblazoned on the ring, feel eerily performative—mere painted expressions of joy. The trashcan, with its cold, metallic cage, suggests confinement and exclusion, introducing a sinister undercurrent. This contrast between buoyancy and restriction, innocence and entrapment, reflects the contradictions of consumer culture. 

Koons, often likened to a neo-Warhol, iconizes the banal. But where Andy Warhol’s Pop art glorified celebrity and consumption, Koons probes the artifice of suburban pleasures. It is telling that Koons has expressed that, for him, the title of the Popeye series implied “an eye for Pop”—a phrase that reveals his self-aware stance toward the visual language of mass culture.ⁱⁱ Much like Warhol’s tributes to popular culture and industrial design in his silkscreens and Brillo Boxes, Koons elevates dollar-store pool toys to the status of fine art, simultaneously celebrating and critiquing their cultural ubiquity.

Surrealism, Sexuality, and the Fetish Object

Koons’ fascination with inflatable toys extends beyond childhood nostalgia and openly acknowledges their fetishistic allure. Speaking at the Serpentine Gallery’s debut of the Popeye series in 2009, he quipped that “there is a huge sexual fetish thing on the Web for pool toys” and lamented that it is always a “bit of tragedy if they go soft due to a leak.”ⁱⁱⁱ This statement recontextualizes Dolphin Taz Trashcan, lending it an underlying erotic charge. The composition reinforces this dual reading. The dolphin, penetrating the swim ring, suggests a phallic motif, while the open-ended trashcan resembles a constraining, metallic passage. The taut ropes and steel chain, typically associated with play, now hint at bondage, submission, and containment. This interplay between soft and hard, freedom and restraint, echoes the fetishization of objects, a theme deeply embedded in the work of Salvador Dalí. His Lobster Telephone, 1936, in which a crustacean’s tail aligns with the mouthpiece of a rotary phone, uses absurdity to heighten sexual innuendo—a strategy Koons similarly employs. Like Duchamp and Dalí, Koons understands the seductive power of the fetish object, both in its sexual and consumerist connotations. Dolphin Taz Trashcan becomes a composite of desires: nostalgia, consumption, play, and repression, all intertwined in a surreal, hyperreal assemblage.

“Koons’s art represents the conflation of the readymade with the dream of surrealism… [It] begins with the legacy of Duchamp but combines the Frenchman’s contrarian irony with the perverse, sexualized emotionality of Salvador Dalí.”

—David Salle

Optimism, Transformation, and the Power of Art

Despite these tensions, Dolphin Taz Trashcan is not wholly cynical. Koons has always positioned his art as a conduit for self-empowerment. “Art is about something you carry around inside yourself,” he has stated.^iv “It’s not about the objects—they’re just carriers of the ability to stimulate and activate the viewer’s mental and physical state.”^v This idea is reflected in the Popeye series’ namesake: a self-transforming cartoon hero who gains superhuman strength by consuming spinach. The dolphin, seemingly trapped yet cheerfully emerging from its confines, embodies this same resilient optimism. Suspended mid-air, the sculpture suggests movement, as if the dolphin might yet break free. Arthur C. Danto, in discussing Koons’ Popeye works, observed that the animals appear to reassure themselves, thinking, “I’ll get through this!” The bright red chain, though a tether, also functions as a support—Koons’ version of a life preserver.^vi In this sense, Dolphin Taz Trashcan is a metaphor for perseverance, a playful yet profound commentary on survival in a world of constraints.

“Popeye is about an image of, 'I am what I am'. Kind of a symbol of self-acceptance that you have to embrace who you are. Popeye has spinach. Spinach brings about his transcendence, and brings about his power. That’s what art [is]. Art is our spinach.”

—Jeff Koons

Elevating the Everyday

Koons’ works neither alienate nor critique; they seek to engage. As art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann explains, his sculptures provide “what people expect from high art—it is beautiful, perfectly crafted, and connects to an elevating tradition—but it simultaneously reverses that tradition by celebrating the ordinary.”^vii Dolphin Taz Trashcan literalizes this act of elevation by being suspended from the ceiling, forcing the viewer to look up at an object they might otherwise dismiss. In doing so, Koons democratizes art, making it accessible to all. The mirrored finishes of other inflatables in Koons’ related series—such as the Hybrids, begun around 2003 and featuring puffed-up likenesses of the spinach-guzzling sailor himself, or the Celebration works, which originated in the mid-1990s and span subjects from balloon dogs to tulips—often reflect the viewer, drawing them into the experience. Here, though the objects themselves are not reflective, they function as cultural mirrors—reminding us of our collective past, our consumerist impulses, and our ability to transcend limitations. Dolphin Taz Trashcan is more than a sculptural assemblage; it is an invitation. Whether interpreted as a celebration of childhood, a critique of suburban illusion, or a surrealist exploration of desire, it compels us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, urging us, like Popeye, to embrace our own transformations.

ⁱPeter Schjeldahl, “Selling Points,” The New Yorker, June 30 2014, online.
ⁱⁱJeff Koons, quoted in Arthur C. Danto, “A New World for Popeye: Jeff Koons' ‘Popeye Suite’,” in Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, London, 2009, p. 31.
ⁱⁱⁱJeff Koons, quoted in Sarah Thornton, 33 Artists in 3 Acts, W.W. Norton, New York, 2014, n.p.
^ivJeff Koons, quoted in Dorothea von Hantelmann, “Why Koons?” Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, London, 2009, p. 57.
^vIbid.
^viArthur C. Danto, “A New World for Popeye: Jeff Koons' ‘Popeye Suite’,” in Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, London, 2009, pp. 32-33.
^viiDorothea von Hantelmann, “Why Koons?” in ibid, p. 50.