Museo Jumex, Mexico City
May 2019
May 19–September 29, 2019
Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and the Object in the Work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, Even presented more than seventy works by both artists. The exhibition was curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director at the New Museum in New York.
The exhibition at Museo Jumex, according to the press release, placed the work of Koons and Duchamp "side by side, as in a hall of mirrors that reflects, distorts, and amplifies the artists’ similarities and differences within a complex ‘regime of coincidences,’ to borrow one of Duchamp’s peculiar expressions." The exhibition’s title, too, borrows from Duchamp’s famous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–1923).
"It is a unique opportunity to be able to bring together the work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons," Gioni states; "Appearance Stripped Bare is less preoccupied with grafting family trees than with understanding how our attitudes toward objects have changed over the past century, and how the objects that we surround ourselves with are reflections of our desires."
The show was accompanied by a daylong conference at IFAL, the French Institute of Latin America, on May 18, starting at 10:30 AM. A full program of conversations featuring curators, scholars, and writers includes Jeffrey Deitch, who has worked frequently with Koons and who contributed an essay to the Whitney Museum’s retrospective catalogue, and Francis Naumann, a New York–based scholar specializing in Duchamp and New York Dada.
Listen to Koons in conversation with Luke Syson, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast.
Image: Left: Marcel Duchamp. Roue de Bicyclette, 1913. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC. © MARCEL DUCHAMP / ADAGP / SOMAAP / MÉXICO / 2019. Right: Jeff Koons, One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series), 1985