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Bright and brash, larger than life, these are all qualities of an oeuvre that explores the visual and sensory excess of American consumerism and media culture. Jeff Koons is an eclectic figure, juggling the found-image methodology of pop art with the ideas-driven ethic of conceptual art. Anticipating the celebrity culture associated with figures such as Damien Hirst, Koons’ rise to the top was marked by clever marketing and careful image management. The work often inhabits the boundaries of acceptable taste, dashing the notion of an aloof ‘high art’ culture, a positioning which for him is central to his enquiry into what he calls ‘the morality of what it means to be an artist’. Koons often takes archetypal images and objects to new extremes, for instance his highly-recognisable balloon dogs rendered in polished stainless steel. For Koons this is a way of revealing the inner personality of the emblems of everyday popular culture. Koons’ work is consistently successful at auction, his most expensive work selling for nearly £13m at a 2008 Christie’s sale. Often a divisive and controversial figure, Koons is one of the most collectable and highly-visible figures on the contemporary art landscape.