Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in London is presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition of work by the influential and often controversial American artist Jeff Koons. “Jeff Koons: Now” is the first major UK exhibition of the artist’s work since “Jeff Koons: Popeye Series” at the Serpentine Gallery in 2009.Occupying Newport Street Gallery’s six, expansive galleries, “Now” traces the development of Koons’s radical reconfiguration of the readymade through more than thirty paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, drawn directly from Hirst’s collection“The thing I love about Jeff’s work is that it’s contemporary, it’s here, it’s today,” says Hirst, who first saw Koons’s work in the 1987–1988 group exhibition “New York Art Now” at the Saatchi Gallery in London, and has now been collecting the artist’s work for 12 years.“Now” spans thirty-five years of the Koons’s career from 1979-2014 and includes a variety of works from some of the artist’s most iconic series such as “Inflatables,” “The New,” “Equilibrium,” “Luxury,” “Degradation,” “Made in Heaven,” “Popeye,” and “Hulk Elvis,” amongst others.According to the Gallery, “having begun his career focusing on the status of the object, “Now” demonstrates how Koons quickly embarked on his lifelong investigation into the means by which objects are represented and communicated.”Highlights of the exhibition include one of Koons’s earliest works, “Inflatable Flowers (Short White, Tall Purple)” (1979), the monumental “Balloon Monkey (Blue)” (2006–2013), the “Equilibrium” Nike posters, as well as number of the artist’s iconic wall-mounted “Hoovers.”“Now” is at Newport Street Gallery in London until October 16
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