Jeff Koons Retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris

Text / Chen Chi-Hsiang

Chewing gum again:

The Jeff Koons retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris ends next Monday. It is a very popular exhibition that has broken the Centre Pompidou's attendance records for recent years. One can imagine an exhibition that children of all ages can understand at a glance, requiring no academic knowledge or profound theoretical arguments. Yet it makes one wonder how something so commonplace can become art.

I feel the sensation of chewing gum: sweet, pleasant, beautiful, sexy, with a mild mass appeal. But chew it too long, and you lose the flavor, leaving only a hard, sticky residue that you spit out automatically—or find it difficult not to. After the fragrance fades, what feelings or impressions remain? Is art sufficient as entertainment for everyone?

"The Jeff Koons retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, wrapped in sugar-coating, is the most popular exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in recent years. In just a few months, it attracted 570,000 or 800,000 visitors, astonishingly breaking all major exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou. One can imagine that this popular exhibition also represents the artist whose market performance is most astonishing."