Extended through September 18, 2014
Installation video
Jeff Koons
Split-Rocker, 2000
Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Jeff Koons
Split-Rocker, 2000
Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Jeff Koons
Split-Rocker, 2000
Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Jeff Koons
Split-Rocker, 2000
Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Jeff Koons
Split-Rocker, 2000
Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
This summer, Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker makes its New York City debut at Rockefeller Center, to coincide with the opening of the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Presented by Gagosian and organized by the Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer, Split-Rocker is a spectacular planted form that towers over thirty-seven feet high and features over fifty thousand flowering plants. First exhibited at Palais des Papes, Avignon, France, in 2000, it was subsequently shown at the Château de Versailles (2008), France, and Fondation Beyeler (2012), Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. It is also in the collection of the Glenstone private museum in Potomac, Maryland, where it has been on view since June of 2013.
Consistent with Koons’s persistent fascination with dichotomy and the in-between, the inspiration for Split-Rocker came when he decided to split and combine two similar but different toy rockers—a pony belonging to his son, and a dinosaur (“Dino”). The slippage or “split” between the different halves of the heads gives an almost Cubist aspect to the composition. As the model was enlarged to the scale of a small house, the split became an opening, a profile, and a light shaft. In contrast to his legendary Puppy of 1992, which was presented by the Public Art Fund at Rockefeller Center in the summer of 2000, Split-Rocker suggests the idea of a fantasy shelter. Whereas the singular form of Puppy is closed and sculptural, the combined form of Split-Rocker is architectural and hollow.
Jeff Koons’s flowering sculpture Split-Rocker, at once imposing and adorable, has cast a spell on New York City’s Rockefeller Center. Derek Blasberg interviews Matt Donham, Koons’s landscape designer on the project, to find out more.
Stella McCartney’s new limited-edition capsule collection made in collaboration with Jeff Koons launched in January 2026. Blending the two creators’ singular visions, the collection, which was first seen in McCartney’s Winter 2025 runway show, features a wide array of garments and accessories printed with artworks by Koons and slogans by McCartney. The collaboration continues the pair’s long-standing creative partnership, which has previously included jewelry, prints, and charitable initiatives. At the unveiling in New York, Koons met with Derek C. Blasberg to reflect on the collaboration, the importance of caring and community, and meeting Salvador Dalí when he was nineteen years old.
The Winter 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jeff Koons’s Kissing Lovers (2016–25) on the cover.
With an exhibition of all-new work at Gagosian, New York, in November, Jeff Koons met with Alison McDonald at his New York studio to discuss the processes, inspirations, and metaphysical underpinnings of his latest sculptures and paintings.
Catalyzed by Laws of Motion—a group exhibition pairing artworks from the 1980s on by Jeff Koons, Cady Noland, Rosemarie Trockel, and Jeff Wall with contemporary sculptures by Josh Kline and Anicka Yi—Wyatt Allgeier discusses the convergences and divergences in these artists’ practices with an eye to the economic worlds from which they spring.
The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.
Paul Goldberger tracks the evolution of Mitchell and Emily Rales’s Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland. Set amid 230 acres of pristine landscape and housing a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art, this graceful complex of pavilions, designed by architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, opened to the public in the fall of 2018.
Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.
Learn more about Jeff Koons’s Easyfun-Ethereal series in this video featuring Rebecca Sternthal, one of the organizers behind the most recent exhibition of these works in New York.
Derek Blasberg speaks with Diane Brown, president and founder of RxART, and with contributing artists Dan Colen, Urs Fischer, and Jeff Koons about the transformative power of visual art.
Jeff Koons speaks with Alison McDonald and Maura Harty about his longstanding commitment to protecting the rights of children.
The FLAG Art Foundation hosted a conversation between Jeff Koons and FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman, in which the two discuss the dichotomy between sexuality and childhood innocence in Koons’s oeuvre, remaking Made in Heaven with Lady Gaga, what drives Koons to make more work, and several works including Cat on a Clothesline (1994–2001) and Winter Bears (1988).
Derek Blasberg speaks with Scott Rothkopf, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, about the last thirty-six hours of the Jeff Koons retrospective, which also marked the end of the museum’s tenure in uptown Manhattan.
Jeff Koons’s first, mammoth one-man show opens at the Whitney today, which is also the last show at the museum’s Madison Avenue location.
