Jeff Koons, Easyfun Mirrors, 1999

Narrator: The mirrors in this room come from a series that Koons titled Easyfun. 

Scott Rothkopf: You see each of these mirrors takes the form or shape, silhouette, of a cartoon animal, and is rendered in a bright, almost Life Saver like color, candy colored tones.

When you look at yourself in these mirrors, you're distorted a little bit like in a fun house. That distortion in a way relates to me to Koons's own presentation of himself in the earlier Made in Heaven work.

But here it’s a way of cooling down, of coming to terms with oneself, of having a pause from the extreme imagery in the previous gallery.

Narrator: Koons intended the Easyfun works as a kind of release valve for himself, as well. Made in Heaven and the scandal it had provoked had wreaked havoc on his personal and professional lives. He had also run into difficulties with a project that we’ll encounter upstairs, called Celebration. It proved technically exacting, expensive, and extremely time-consuming. Easyfun and the next project, Easyfun-Ethereal, gave Koons a lighter, more improvisational way of working during this period.