Radial Champs After Koons (2026) Joshhua Ray
Visual & Material Analysis
This sculpture presents an inflatable dolphin mounted horizontally on a black wooden stool, elevating a mass-produced leisure object into the register of sculpture. The seams, valve, printed safety warnings, and retail graphics are intentionally left visible. Nothing is disguised. The dolphin is not transformed materially—it is recontextualized.
Key formal tensions:
Soft vs. rigid: inflatable vinyl against a utilitarian stool
Play vs. display: pool toy vs. pedestal logic
Horizontal body vs. vertical art-viewing posture
Cute iconography vs. institutional presentation
The stool functions as a surrogate pedestal, but a deliberately inadequate one—too domestic, too casual—undermining the authority of classical display.
Conceptual Relevance
This work sits convincingly within post-readymade, commodity critique, and late-Pop / post-Internet sculpture traditions.
Relevant art-historical touchstones (without imitation):
Duchamp – readymade logic, but softened and consumerized
Warhol – mass imagery, but stripped of branding heroism
Jeff Koons – inflatable aesthetics, minus polish and spectacle
Haim Steinbach – object-as-display syntax
Josh Kline / Mika Rottenberg – late-capitalist absurdity