HULK ELVIS

"The Hulk Elvis series tries to deal with the visceral but also to connect people using references to art history. Art history has a way of connecting people with humanity, with the depths of our own human history. It gives us a sense of our past, but also our future".

In this new series, which Koons began in 2004, the Incredible Hulk pose recalls that of Elvis Presley from the publicity still for the Western film Flaming Star. This is one of the singer´s best-known images, immortalized in Andy Warhol´s screenprints. Koons conjoins a bronze inflatable toy version of the sullen superhero with real objects to create a modified readymade. Koons plunged into an arduous research process to discover how 3D scanning techniques could be used to make replicas of iconic objects from history which he considers altered readymades. A case in point is the Liberty Bell, a quintessential symbol of the freedoms and independence of the American people, which has been cast several times and has a long history of replicas which Koons revives with his emulative work. In addition to the sculptures of this series, Koons created complex paintings with multiple layers and an increasingly prominent use of Benday dots, an obvious nod to the comic book universe and, above all, to the artist who made them a signature element of his work, Roy Lichtenstein.