Jeff Koons

One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series)

One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series) presents a familiar, everyday object in an extraordinary way. By filling a basketball with distilled water and suspending it in a precisely combined solution of distilled water and pure salt, Koons created an uncanny effect of perfect equilibrium.

As with most things that appear perfect, there are unseen complexities. The balance of the solution will eventually shift, and the ball will sink. This active aspect of the work offers social commentary; many young, underprivileged Americans believe in advertisements that present athletic stardom as a pathway out of poverty, and they are ultimately disillusioned when it does not happen. Koons’s sculpture is a metaphor for this scenario and for the broader human experience. Its womblike quality suggests the time before birth, the implied suspension in nothingness alludes to the mysteries of death, and the ball’s inflation represents human breath.

“Deflated,” Koons says, “it would be a symbol of death, but inflated, it’s a symbol of life.”