Jeff Koons returns to Gagosian this fall with Porcelain Series, opening November 13 at the gallery’s 541 West 24th Street location in New York. The exhibition marks the celebrated artist’s return to the gallery and the first time his Porcelain series has been presented as a dedicated body of work. Known for transforming everyday objects into iconic artworks, Koons uses this new chapter to revisit the language of porcelain figurines and classical myth through a contemporary lens.
ART
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a group of large-scale sculptures, crafted from mirror-polished stainless steel coated in layers of transparent color. Modeled on porcelain figures from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, the works depict mythological characters such as Venus and Diana, as well as symbolic figures like a stag paired with a dog or lovers locked in embrace. With surfaces that gleam like porcelain yet defy fragility, the sculptures invite viewers into a dialogue between beauty, resilience, and participation, as reflections merge the art object with its audience.
The technical mastery behind these works underscores Koons’s fascination with materials and production. Each piece results from a multi-step process that includes digital capture, precision engineering, laser plotting, painting, and meticulous polishing. The outcome is both sensorial and symbolic: objects that dazzle in their finish while carrying the weight of art history and myth.
Alongside the sculptures, the exhibition presents Koons’s Porcelain oil paintings. Layered in technique and meaning, the works begin with naturalistic depictions of landscapes, ocean waves, forests, or skies. Koons overlays them with gestural brushstrokes before applying aluminum leaf, which in turn carries images from Renaissance and Counter-Reformation prints. These engraved references, drawn from artists like Agostino Carracci, Marcantonio Raimondi, and Johann Sadeler, reappear transformed, merged with Koons’s own interventions and vivid marks. The result is a palimpsest of visual culture, a composition where myth and art history intersect with contemporary expression.
In these paintings, Koons revisits stories of mythology and allegory, reviving familiar narratives such as the Judgment of Paris or Neptune and Caenis. By layering historical imagery with his gestural brushwork and reflective materiality, he underscores the persistence of images through time and their ability to be reinterpreted for each era.
Reflecting on the series, Koons describes the work as “in dialogue with art from ancient times through history to this moment,” affirming a belief in humanity’s capacity to transcend. Porcelain Series becomes not just a meditation on material and technique, but an assertion of continuity between myth, beauty, and the cultural present.
Koons’s exhibition at Gagosian situates itself at the intersection of spectacle and scholarship, reaffirming his position as one of the most debated and influential figures in contemporary art. By transforming porcelain into monumental steel and layering myth with gesture, he creates artworks that shimmer with both surface allure and historical depth, inviting audiences to see themselves reflected in a centuries-long story of art and desire.
