Jeff Koons - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Saturday, June 28, 2008 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Sonnabend Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons Retrospective, 4 September – 12 December, 2004 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    A. Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992 (another example illustrated); M. Woltmann, Jeff Koons Retrospective, Oslo, 2004, p. 58 (another example illustrated); R. Rosenblum, J. Koons, The Jeff Koons Handbook, London, 1992, p. 158 (another example illustrated).

  • Catalogue Essay

    Executed in 1986, Jeff Koons stainless steel Mermaid Troll is a depiction of two mythological figures fused as one. Troll and mermaid as one, this gleaming sculptural work, Koons has presented the present lot as asexual and almost childlike – a figure that has been stripped of all suggestions and innuendos, which as a result infuses the work with caricatured features.
    Belonging to the ‘Statutory Series', Mermaid Troll exudes a delirious vapid expression contributing to a look that is undeniably ‘Koons kitsch'. The series revolves around Koons transforming commercial and historical icons into clean sleek objects of art, blurring the line between banality and artificial hyperbole. Such a luxurious depiction of what is otherwise considered in the art world to be ‘aesthetically grotesque' exposes the vulnerabilities of the hierarchies of aesthetic representations and value systems, teasing the limits between high and low culture. As such, Jeff Koons' work touches upon the charismatic to dismantle prejudices and reconcile opposites.

208

Mermaid Troll

1986
Stainless steel.
52.1 x 24.1 x 24.1 cm. (20 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in).
Stamped with the foundry mark ‘ALFCO-NY' on the reverse of the base. This work is from an edition of three plus one artist's proof.

Estimate
£400,000 - 600,000 

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

29 June 2008, 5pm
London