Jeff Koons: A Retrospective
June 27–Oct 19, 2014
Equilibrium
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Koons staged his first solo gallery exhibition, Equilibrium, in 1985. The show presented a multilayered allegory of, in Koons’s words, unattainable “states of being” or salvation. Cast-bronze floatation devices, for example, maintained a permanent inflatedness, yet they would kill rather than save their users. On the walls hung framed, unaltered Nike posters, procured by Koons from the company’s headquarters, that conjoined the perfection of appropriated prints with that of the famous athletes they featured. The exhibition’s best-known works remain the tanks in which basketballs miraculously hover. These sculptures expand philosophically on The New; while that series addressed the perfect moment of creation, Koons considers Equilibrium a moment of pure potential: “Equilibrium is before birth, it’s in the womb, it’s about what is prior to life and after death. It’s this ultimate state of the eternal that is reflected in this moment.”
One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J 241 Series), 1985
Jeff Koons, One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J 241 Series), 1985. Glass, steel, sodium chloride reagent, distilled water, basketball; 64 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 13 1/4 in. (164.5 x 78.1 x 33.7 cm). Collection of B. Z. and Michael Schwartz. ©Jeff Koons.
The stillness of this gravity-defying basketball continues to surprise viewers nearly thirty years after its debut. Koons could have created the effect by submerging the ball in a viscous liquid such as silicon, but he insisted on using water in order to maintain the purity of the sculpture and his viewer’s trust in it. In consultation with the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard P. Feynman, Koons realized that by first filling more than half the tank with a solution of highly refined salt and distilled water and then filling the ball itself with distilled water, the ball would float on the heavier substance; he then poured more distilled water into the top portion of the tank. This precise equilibrium, however, does not last forever. Temperature fluctuations and vibrations from viewers’ footsteps blend the solutions of water, ultimately causing the ball to sink. For Koons, the inevitability of this failure provides the work’s theme of perfect balance with a poignant counterpoint of instability.