A blue balloon canine sculpture created by Koons broke into tiny shards when a customer by chance kicked its podium, in line with the gallery internet hosting the piece.
In a press release shared with CNN over electronic mail, the gallery’s district supervisor, Cédric Boero, who was managing the Artwork Wynwood sales space, instructed CNN that the gallery serves as “one of many official representatives for the well-known Jeff Koons balloon canine sculptures.”
“After all it’s heartbreaking to see such an iconic piece destroyed,” mentioned Boero.
He mentioned the piece fell after an unnamed artwork collector visiting the sales space unintentionally kicked the pedestal throughout the honest’s opening cocktail hour Thursday night.
“The collector by no means meant to interrupt the sculpture, the truth is she by no means touched it along with her fingers,” he mentioned.
“It was the opening cocktail, a number of individuals have been on our sales space, she gave unintentionally just a little kick within the pedestal, which was sufficient to trigger the sculpture to fall down.”
“This type of factor sadly occurs, that’s the reason the paintings was coated by insurance coverage,” he mentioned.
The gallery shared images of the sculpture decreased to scraps of ceramic mendacity on the ground.
The 2021 piece was entitled “Balloon Canine (Blue)” and valued at round $61,170 in line with an electronic mail from Bel-Air Nice Artwork.
The sculpture was manufactured from porcelain and measured 40 x 48 x 16 cm. A complete of 799 editions of the sculpture have been made.
Koons and Artwork Wynwood didn’t instantly reply to CNN’s request for remark.
Koons’ balloon animal figures are a few of the most iconic – and costly – sculptures within the modern artwork world.
His items have fetched jaw-dropping sums at public sale: “Rabbit” (1986) offered for $132 million at Christie’s New York in 2019, and “Balloon Canine (Orange)” (1994-2000) offered for $85 million six years earlier.
He has created a whole lot of renditions of the balloon canine, a few of them towering over three-metres tall, and a few of them simply over a foot tall, just like the sculpture that shattered.
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