LONDON.- Christie’s will be offering Jeff Koons’ Balloon Monkey (Blue) (executed in 2006-2013) as one of the highlights of the Frieze October 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 9 October 2024.

With an estimate of £6,500,000 – 10,000,000, this magnificent sculpture by Jeff Koons will be installed in St James’s Square, adjacent to Christie’s Headquarters in London, from 30 September 2024 to 9 October 2024. This work comes to auction following the success of Balloon Monkey (Magenta), sold in 2022 for £10,136,500. An evolution of Koons' renowned Celebration series which began in 1993 and includes some of his most iconic creations—such as Balloon Dog (1994-2000)—this sculpture is one of five unique versions (Red, Magenta, Blue, Yellow, and Orange).

Katharine Arnold, Vice Chairman 20th/21st Century Art and Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Europe at Christie’s: “Following the spectacular success of Balloon Monkey (Magenta) which sold for £10.1m at Christie’s London in 2022, we are excited to be presenting Balloon Monkey (Blue) (2006-2013) for the first time at auction. Previously exhibited at Newport Street Gallery in 2016 and Palazzo Strozzi, Florence in 2021-2022, the work is a triumph in formal splendour and technical achievement refined over seven years by the artist. It is a masterpiece of paradoxical power, its contradictions oscillating between mind-bending complexity and total simplicity; seriousness and play; pop culture and our deepest, most primal structures of myth and belief. It represents something that is bigger than us, yet part of us all. For all its surface tension and extraordinary presence, the sculpture contains and holds the viewer in its façade, inviting them into a world of imagination. The work will be installed in St James’s Square from 30 September – 9 October and we look forward to welcoming visitors to enjoy it in person.”

Jeff Koons’ Balloon Monkey (Blue)

• The themes of air, breath and inflation have long been central to Koons’ practice. He began to explore blow-up objects as early as 1979 with his Inflatables, which found counterparts in the encased, fluorescently-lit vacuum cleaners he exhibited as The New the following year. The Equilibrium series of 1985 included basketballs suspended in tanks of water, and unnerving, weighty flotation devices made of bronze. His iconic stainless-steel Rabbit, a direct ancestor to the twisted balloon animals, appeared in 1986; the Balloon Dog arrived as part of the large-scale Celebration series commenced in the early 1990s, which reimagined objects associated with milestones such as birthdays, Easter and Valentine’s Day.

Alongside Balloon Swan (2004-11) and Balloon Rabbit (2005-10), Balloon Monkey (Blue) represents an evolution of these works, developing their exuberant spirit and complex, confounding presence.

• A majestic vision, seven years in the making, Balloon Monkey (Blue) (2006-13) saw Jeff Koons’ sculptural practice reach extraordinary new heights of formal splendour, technical achievement and sheer, awe-inspiring impact. Completed on the eve of the artist’s career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, its seductive form, monumental scale and reflective, opulently coloured surface capture the essence of his work. Koons continually probes the iconography of childhood innocence to highlight the desires and joy that animate our relationship with art.

• Balloon Monkey (Blue) is one of five unique versions of Balloon Monkey, each formed of mirror polished stainless steel with a transparent colour coating: the others are coloured red, magenta, yellow, and orange. Developing the vocabulary of the Celebration series, which included Koons’ first inflatable colossus, the iconic Balloon Dog (1994-2000), Balloon Monkey (Blue) arrives at an apex of glossy, weightless perfection. Sweeping six metres from head to tail and standing almost four metres high, it towers like a sphinx or totem, an ephemeral plaything transformed into a sublime, otherworldly object of worship.

• With its pyramidal structure and swooping, cantilevered tail, Balloon Monkey (Blue) can be seen as an abstract, almost architectural presence. Its clean lines and space-age geometries recall the work of Constantin Brâncuși, the father of modernist sculpture. Its form contains multiple layers of abstraction, from monkey to balloon representation to monolithic sculpture, as if elevated from reality to a metaphysical ideal. Koons strives for a sense of ‘objectivity’ and universality through his works’ pure, hyper-polished facture.

• Balloon Monkey (Blue) reflects key moments in Koons’ life and universal milestones, blending personal history with broader themes. Koons views the inflatable as a metaphor for the human condition, where breath symbolises life energy—an essence that can be externalised, representing the balance between our inner and outer worlds.