Jeff Koons and his Play-Doh pile 'Now' in London

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Newport Street Gallery in London presents ‘Now’ a solo exhibition of work by American artist Jeff Koons spanning 35 years.

OPEN TODAY! Jeff Koons: Now at Newport Street Gallery #JeffKoonsNow pic.twitter.com/nnHgmPJXcL

— NewportStreetGallery (NPSGallery) <a href="https://twitter.com/NPSGallery/status/732858670942412800">May 18, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <b></b>Curated by British artist Damien Hirst and Koon himself, it includes more than 30 works, including paintings, paper works and sculptures. <b></b> <blockquote class="twitter-video"tw-align-center data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">NOW on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/newsnight?src=hash">#newsnight</a> – Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons recall when they first met in Germany in early 90s <a href="https://t.co/4BtDsHZh06">https://t.co/4BtDsHZh06</a></p>&mdash; BBC Newsnight (BBCNewsnight) May 18, 2016

Hugh Allen, Senior Curator, Newport Street Gallery: “He is very interested in the idea of that art relates to the human. We inhale – which he sees as a metaphor for life – and exhale as a metaphor for death and that’s kind of the route of where all this work has come from really.”
Other large scale works include this huge ‘Bowl with Eggs (Pink)’ and ‘Play-Doh’, a mountainous reproduction of a small lump of modeling clay once fashioned by Koons’ young son. > Now here's a play dough times Jeff Koons – Newport gallery pic.twitter.com/FwxFsa3o2j

— Paulene Abrey (PauleneAbrey) <a href="https://twitter.com/PauleneAbrey/status/733332062560768000">May 19, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <b></b>Estelle Lovatt is an Art Critic:"The childhood sculptures are trying to take us right back to our earliest form of communication, how we sculpt with play doh or plasticine. You know it's wonderful, how we touch and feel, messy play, and it's trying to get rid of our inhibitions, it's also trying to say; 'Listen, everything and anything is art'." <b></b>Therefore wall-mounted hoovers displayed in fluorescent-lit boxes are art. They date back from Koons' time working as a Wall Street commodities broker. It might not be to everyone's taste. <b></b>In November 2013, Koons was named the most expensive living artist when his 'Balloon Dog (Orange)' sold for $58.4m. <b></b> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"tw-align-center data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Vogue Culture Tip: Catch Jeff Koons’ first UK exhibition in seven years <a href="https://twitter.com/NPSGallery">NPSGallery https://t.co/Mu704O4fow pic.twitter.com/gMdfhqc5Kx— VOGUE.CO.UK (BritishVogue) <a href="https://twitter.com/BritishVogue/status/732818007106314240">May 18, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <b></b>Hugh Allen is senior curator, Newport Street Gallery: "Art is an obsession with life, as Francis Bacon used to say, and this is modern life. It's of a period, but it's about life and sometimes people find that hard to digest in terms of what they think art might be. If you think about Picasso, you think about the outrage of 'Demoiselles d'Avignon' and it's not unheard of really, the kind of the shock of the new." <b></b> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"tw-align-center data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Michael Jackson and Bubbles- porcelain, life-size sculpture by Jeff Koons. Also the greatest work of art ever. <a href="https://t.co/rBs9gM39Tx">pic.twitter.com/rBs9gM39Tx</a></p>&mdash; Chad Fifer (ChadFifer) May 13, 2016

The exhibition Jeff Koons: ‘Now’,runs from 18 May 2016 to 16 Oct 2016 and contains sexually explicit material.