Art imitates life: Koons x Kuhn
The images produced by Chuck Kuhn didn’t just capture the imaginations of young basketball fans across the world. In 1985, contemporary artist Jeff Koons opened his first major exhibition, titled Equilibrium, in New York. Following in the Duchampian tradition of ‘readymade sculpture’ and with a keen interest in Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, Koons blurred the line between art and object.
The exhibition consisted of a series of basketballs suspended in a saline solution housed in a display case, paradoxical bronze castings of flotation devices and perhaps most controversially, a series of Kuhn’s Nike posters including Boardroom, Dr. Dunkenstein, Moses and The Dynasty on 34th Street. Recognising the powerful cultural resonance of Kuhn’s imagery, Koons acquired the rights from Nike and presented them – totally unaltered – in a simple frame. Simply by presenting them in a white-cube gallery – as opposed to in a teenager’s bedroom – Koons conferred the status of objet d’art to the series.
For the artist, the images represented a new means of social mobility for urban youth that negated issues of class and race. To go from struggling inner-city neighbourhoods to household fame by virtue of athletic prowess was the embodiment of the American dream. Still, Koons realised the potential falsehoods perpetuated by these fantastical scenes as well, likening them to ‘sirens calling sailors to shipwreck,’ in a 2003 interview with Art Forum.
While Koons consistently insists that his work ‘communicates little save for their own existence,’ he continues to have relevance in the art world. Recently, two Koons posters from the 1985 series sold for $146,500 and $185,000 at the largest global art auction houses. And you thought the sneaker resell game was bad!
Originally published in Sneaker Freaker Issue 37. Get your copy here!