“Koons’ first solo show, Equilibrium, was seen at ‘International With Monument’ in New York in 1985. His position as artist was marked out by two groups of work that have proved to be of central importance...there were bronze casts of a rubber dinghy, a diver’s jacket with oxygen tank, and diving goggles with snorkel. They were objects designed to preserve life. But, like the balls, they had been preserved in an eternal state of still life, of nature morte...The diving equipment cast in bronze was like a remote relic of life, like an implosion of energy and mass in upon themselves.”
I n its dramatic embodiment of the dichotomies of life and death, swimming and sinking, Snorkel-Generic represents one of the artist’s most potent conceptual projects. Like so much of his work, the idea for Snorkle-Generic was a personal one, stemming from his own life experiences–in this case a tender moment from his own childhood as he spent many summers swimming and snorkeling with his father. This recognizable and functional replica of a traditional snorkel beckons the viewer to investigate its almost mystical quality of life-given breath, and its importance in the role of creation. “I have always enjoyed objects that contain air because they are very anthropomorphic,” Koons has said. “Every time you take a breath, it’s like a symbol of life...” (The artist quoted in Exh. Cat., Paris, Château de Versailles, Jeff Koons: Versailles, September 2008-January 2009, p. 111). Widely considered to be the critical turning-point in Koons’s career, the Equilibrium series is a pinnacle of fabrication and invention.
