NEW YORK – On the heels of the foremost Jeff Koons’ retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Christie’s will offer Balloon Monkey (Orange), as one of the highlights of the November evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art.

Jeff Koons’ monumental stainless steel sculpture with its impressive scale, fluid line and immaculate mirror-like surfaces, achieves a perfect tension between representation and abstraction. One year after Balloon Dog (Orange) set the world auction record for any living artist, Christie’s will present the 20-foot-long Balloon Monkey (Orange) at the entrance of Christie’s 20 Rockefeller Plaza for six weeks, before being sold on Nov. 12.

Seven years in the making, Balloon Monkey (Orange) marks a spectacular new chapter in Jeff Koons oeuvre. Looking at the smooth, highly polished surface of this monolithic balloon animal, one can appreciate how the artist has progressively attained ever-greater heights of perfection. He achieves this through careful planning, dogged determinism and an uncompromising commitment to his vision – outstripping even advanced industry in his technological ambition.

This is one of five unique Balloon Monkey sculptures made from precision engineered, mirror-polished stainless steel finished with a translucent brightly colored palette coating of either: blue, magenta, orange, red or yellow.

The landmark exhibition at the Whitney Museum of America Art, ending Oct. 19, is the most comprehensive survey ever devoted to the artist’s pioneering oeuvre and his first major museum retrospective in New York. The touring show will reopen again in November at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where it will coincide with a display of works at the Musée du Louvre that will include examples of his Balloon Rabbit, Balloon Swan, and Balloon Monkey sculptures.

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