Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis

This book was published on the occasion of Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis at Gagosian, Hong Kong. The exhibition featured polychrome bronze and mixed-media sculptures that pair the Incredible Hulk superhero with a variety of props, as well as several paintings that filter images of nude figures, inflatable animals, and landscapes through obfuscatory treatments including enlarged painterly gestures and Benday dot screens. The surfaces of the sculptures mimic the gloss of vinyl inflatables—forms with which Koons has worked since his early career—while their subject embodies both a current in Western popular culture and the Eastern figure of the “guardian god.” Endowed with protective abilities, the Hulk’s capacity for violence also renders him a fundamentally human animal.

Uniquely constructed, the bilingual (English/Chinese) catalogue includes two sections bound to a W-fold cover—one dedicated to the nine exhibited works, including details and installation photography, and the other for Philip Tinari’s essay, “The Hulks in Hong Kong.” The curator and critic characterizes the Hulk as “a creature of the Cold War and of Camelot” that has now largely shed specific national and cultural associations to symbolize instead a primordial and universal figure.