The museum has adapted to the current situation and is reopen as a safe space in accordance with regulations of the Ministry of Health and the "purple seal" states the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Website after being closed due to Covid19.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art Presents Jeff Koons:
Absolute Value
From the Collection of Marie and Jose Mugrabi
Regarded by many as the most important, influential, popular, and controversial living artist in the world, Jeff Koons is a unique cultural phenomenon, whose resonances and influences extend far beyond the confines of the art world.
Showcasing over three decades of works by renowned artist and cultural phenomenon, Jeff Koons, Absolute Value highlights Koons’s extraordinary career, from the 1980’s until today.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents Absolute Value, showcasing the works of American artist Jeff Koons, a world-renowned cultural phenomenon who explores themes pertaining to banality, consumerism, mass culture and beauty, resonating far beyond the confines of the art world. Curated by Doron Rabina, Chief Curator of Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Absolute Value offers a glimpse into Koons’s diverse spectrum of mediums and techniques, through the eyes of the collector, from different periods in the artists’ extraordinary career. Koons’s first solo exhibition in Israel showcases some of his most prominent works from the last three decades.
Absolute Value features twelve large-scale works, from iconic series - such as Bear and Policeman (1988) from the Banality series; Dolphin Taz Trashcan (2007–11) from the Popeye series, and Hulk (Rock) (2004–13) from the Hulk Elvis series. Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Violet) (2013–17), from the Antiquity series, references the history of art, a recurring subject in Koons’s recent work. The exhibition will also unveil Ballet Couple (2010-19), which has been in development for the past ten years and will be unveiled for the first time.
“The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is proud to host one of the greatest artists of our time, Jeff Koons - a prominent and influential figure in contemporary culture”
says Director Tania Coen-Uzzielli.
“We are delighted to present Koons’s first solo exhibition in Israel, marking a significant cultural milestone in our country. I would like to thank Jose Mugrabi for his remarkable generosity in making this exhibition possible, offering our visitors the opportunity to experience these spectacular works of art."
Image: Jeff Koons, Monkeys (Ladder), 2003, oil on canvas, 108 x 84 inches, 274.3 x 213.4 cm © Jeff Koons, Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Image: Jeff Koons, Bear and Policeman, 1988, polychromed wood, 85 x 43 x 37 inches, 215.9 x 109.2 x 94 cm © Jeff Koons;
As one of the most influential artists of our times, Koons who emerged in the 1980s, explores the meaning of art and spectacle in a media-saturated era, while accentuating in his aesthetics the consumer culture that arose at this time. Absolute value is a mathematical concept, denoting size in numerical terms: the absolute value of a number is the distance between it and the zero point on the number axis. The use of this notion in the exhibition’s title raises the question of value as a fundamental notion in Koons’s art, both in meaning and numerically. The title places Koons himself - the artist and the phenomenon - as the axiom of contemporary art; an artist who is an irrepressible phenomenon, a symbol of the era.
Jeff Koons: Absolute Value will be on view throughout the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s largest exhibition space, the Lilly & Yoel Moshe Elstein Multi-Purpose Gallery in the Herta and Paul Amir Building, covering 850 square meters.
Cover image courtesy of Tel Aviv Museum of Art: © Jeff Koons, Photo: Tom Powel Imaging