This is a lobster that gets set up on a trash can and a chair.
It’s called Acrobat
it balances itself.
This is also aluminium.
My name is Jeff Koons. I’m an artist.
This studio is located in New York City.
I’ve always had a little studio in my apartment
or eventually I would have just a large building like this as a studio.
I’ve been in this location for about the last eight years.
Kind of the first thing you learn to do is create
kind of a personal iconography
or you develop a vocabulary to work with
and that vocabulary lets you control physiology and the secretions that take place within the body.
So there is a kind of a sense of power that comes from being able to create certain effects
certain intellectual and physical reactions to work.
This piece is Train
and Train consists of a crane, a ready made crane
and a steam engine, a 1943 Baldwin steam engine
70 feet long.
You walk right underneath this
It’s going to be in front of a museum
so when the museum opens at noon-time
and then when the museum closes
and the piece will do everything that a real train does.
When I was younger, art was a vehicle that created anxiety
and, you know, whether you could draw something just perfect
or it's about performance, in a way
and you start to understand about the history of art
other artists, their involvement with art
how it connects you to other disciplines in the world
and this starts to erode away at the insecurities and anxieties that you have.
When we work on smaller domestic size pieces, they will be cast in up-state New York in aluminium.
We will bring them here and we will do the rest of the metalwork here on site
and then we prime them.
This has just been primed.
Actually this is a base coat of paint.
This piece has been primed, and now we’re going back.
We always get different over-spray each time we paint or prime something
and we have to work the surface to get everything
correct to go on to the next stage.
What art is able to do is, it’s about acceptance
and people talk about aesthetics and all these different things
but at the end of the day what art really is, is a vehicle of acceptance.
First you accept yourself, and eventually the highest state is the acceptance of others.
You know, usually a painting maybe will be a year and a half.
I would say on average a painting is about nine months to a year
but sometimes a painting will be here a year and a half.
Some of these paintings I’ve worked on, I’ve put in storage, then I’ve brought back out to finish the work on
and if you look at Popeye here in the front, he’s here very virile and making, showing his muscles
but if you look in the background there’s also this ghostlike figure of Popeye
floating up off the picture plain in the back.
My relationship with art is changed every day
and every day you wake up, your relationship is a little different with it.
When I was very young, I kind of got a sense of self through art.
My parents let me know that I could do something
and I was proud of that
and I just started to trust in this activity
and it gave me a sense of who I am.