Greg Lynn/Jeff Koons convergence

Jeff Koons “Seal Walrus Trashcans,” 2003-2009

“We want your toys. If you are finished with any of these toys, we want to buy them from you.”  The splash page from the Greg Lynn Form website

Something about the weird and funny-in-the-making installations that Greg Lynn presented at the Yale public lecture in the spring had more than a whiff of a Jeff Koons exhibition.  Like Koons work, Lynn’s walls built of plastic toy “bricks” (see above) were cynical, archly knowing about the dark underside of kitsch pop culture, and well-crafted thanks to digital mapping and fabrication technology.  The recent opening of the Jeff Koons show at the Serpentine Gallery in London (through September 13) cements the art-historical connection and refutes once-and-for-all Peter Eisenman’s implicit claim, made during the Q&A session after the lecture, that Lynn’s recent work is still mostly about complex operational strategies (in the orthodox Eisenman tradition) and NOT about the overt representational strategy of using almost-creepy found objects from the detritus of pop culture.  Pop is back and it has gotten darker and uglier.