Eric van de Weghe, Brussels

Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 62, no. 14, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer and richer in the original work Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are several small scratches to the hexagon to the immediate right of the 'Molten' logo and a further 2mm scratch on the underside, adjacent to artists' initials. There are some light irregularities to the surface of the bronze which are inherent to the artist's working process.
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"When I'm working with an object I always have to give the greatest consideration not to alter the object physically or even psychologically. I try to reveal a certain aspect of the object's personality. I'm placing the object in a context or material which will enhance a specific personality trait within the object..." Jeff Koons


Exhibited at Jeff Koons' first solo show at New York's International with Monument Gallery in November 1985, Soccerball (Molten) and
Snorkel (Dakor) belong to the artist's groundbreaking Equilibrium series which brought together three conceptually interlaced bodies of work: a series of basketballs maintaining a perfect but implausible state of equilibrium in tanks of water; posters featuring American basketball stars and thirdly a series of bronze casts of sports equipment and life-saving devices. The strength of the Equilibrium exhibition resided in the multi-valency of its components and the dialogue engendered between them. Drawing critical acclaim and effectively launching Koons' career, the show presented a tightly choreographed group of works that were visually compelling and articulated a cogent and sophisticated visual discourse on issues of social mobility and the limitations of the urban underclass. "I tried to create a kind of trinity with the show," explains Koons. "The tanks were an ultimate state of being – more biological than The New, which was alienated. The Nike posters were the Sirens – the great deceivers, saying Go for it! I have achieved it. You can achieve it too. And the bronzes, of course, were the tools for Equilibrium that would kill you if you used them. So the underlying theme, really, was that death is the ultimate state of being." (Jeff Koons cited in 'Interview: Jeff Koons – Anthony Haden-Guest' in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 19)

Earlier that decade, Koons had resuscitated the conceptual genius of Marcel Duchamp, alchemising the commonplace into the extraordinary by presenting manufactured objects on a pedestal formerly reserved for high art. The intention of these first displays of ready-mades, which included inflatable toy rabbits and vacuum cleaners, was an expansion of the Duchampian prototype. While the conceptual purity of both artists pivots 𝕴on the fact that the uninitiated might not recognise the objects as art, Koons invests his objects with a deeper symbolic intention, substituting Duchamp's spirit of linguistic play with an incisive comment on capitalism's vacuous obsession with commodities. Disingenuously candid in their presentation, Koons' artistic appropriation of everyday commonplaces ma🎐sks a narrative that operates on numerous levels, confronting the viewer with reflections on social aesthetics while never losing the primacy of the objects' visual appeal.

The bronze ready-mades in the Equilibrium series, which include casts of a basketball, an aqualung, a life jacket and a rubber dinghy as well as the present two works, a soccer ball and a snorkel, become metaphorical embodiments of society's dysfunction. Unlike all of the artist's previous series, a further conceptual dynamic is achieved in these works through the transformation of the object into a different material, a s༒trategy that became a mainstay of Koons' sculptural practice. By casting a soccer ball, an object whose validity and identity is founded on its animated response to the human foot, in a medium synonymous with gravity and immovability, Koons radically alters the semiotic charge of the work. Similarly with the snorkel, there is an acute visual irony as the objects associations of sustaining life are dramatically subverted in a sculpture in which it b𒐪ecomes a death trap or weapon.

Beyond these literal visual readings, Soccerball and Snorkel both assume a more symbolic significance, broaching emotive themes of cultural aspiration through a loaded metaphorical vocabulary. As Daniela Salvioni observes: "The contradiction between the purpose of the original objects... and the massive tonnage of the actual sculptures, transforms the objects into a devastating metaphor of impossibility and unsustainability." (Exhibition Catalogue, San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1993, p. 20). Viewed in the context of their original installation, these works from Equilibrium paint a bleak picture of cultural entropy as the ostensibly incongruous juxtaposition of posters, basketballs and bronze casts of flotation and sporting equipment precipitates meaning. In Koons' complex visual diction, the basketballs symbolise the tools of social advancement available to the urban underclass; theꦿ posters, what Koons calls the "sirens", are the living proof that talent can democratically lead to upward mobility. Such aspirations, however, are revealed to be futile when juxtaposed with the inherently flawed survival gear.

In tandem with this semiotic discourse there is a visual poetry to these objects that derives from their purity of form and the craftsmanship of their fabrication. As with Duchamp's ready-mades, the functionality of the object is replaced by an abstract quality which pushes the beholder beyond the comfortable limits of what constitutes art. Profoundly conceptual, the visual paradox at the core of Soccerball and Snorkel clearly illustrates the influence of the Surrealists on Koons' practice, as epitomised in Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered teacup, Object, 1936. The constant association of different ideas and objects to create new situations, the hijacking of the meaning of familiar objects and the use of metaphors, reiterates the poetics of Surrealism. Aside from any socio-political gloss, there is an aesthetic delectation in the art object per se. For Koons, the perfection of the casting was imperative and throughout his career he has demonstrated a consistent concern for the quality of material and process. Balancing the solidity of the bronze is an aesthetic pleasure in its seductive, tactile surface that captures the intricacies of minute detail on the Soccerball and the Snorkel. It is the primacy of this visual appeal, coupled♛ with the sophisticated semiotic charges of both these works, that makes them amongst the outstandin🅘g early masterpieces of Koons' oeuvre.