In Jay Delay’s newest “DEFLATIONARY ART” installment of digitally deflating Koons’ inflatable sculptures and superimposing the image on a cryptographic token. The technicolor Two- dimensional Mylar Balloons are punctured with a digital device and quickly deflated before being patched and re-inflated to create a work of art that is both ’intimidating’ and frustrating’ at the same time. After witnessing the value of art being deflated “People will be really taken aback,” said artist Delay. “As soon as they start to look down the hole, they will try to pop it back up.” The same principle applies to Useless Inflatable Pole Objects which (rather ironically) resemble trash compactors in the digital age.

Each PVC pole piece collapses and inflates from the same code. The compacted new artwork is dusted off from its home and refilled with new prices. Each piece of ‘post-virtual’ art is simultaneously deflated and inflated to create new performance art. PVC bubble sculptures, original artwork by Jay Delay and their various deflating and inflating qualities.

The title of the work is “Useless Pole Objects,” and the pieces are manipulated in real time so that each piece is open to deflate or inflate on demand. The digital currency Ethereum is digitally adopted by the sculptures. When the price of a particular Pole Object rises, a new sculpture pops into existence to represent the new price.

Similar sculptures (which were admittedly not so bouncy) were in Koons’ 2013 exhibition “Good as Gold,” and “Sky Canvas” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. There, Delay produced a series of Pyrex and acrylic pieces that were deflated and then inflated in the digital world. When the Pyrex sculptures were deflated, their corresponding Pyrex blueprints would appear to be destroyed.

This dented, pitted facade, once removed, would turn out to be the ‘original blueprints’ for the pyrex sculptures.

Delay's deflationary Koons’ sculptures in 2012 were hardly dented, pitted or leaking, but the two artists’ work were met with a curious aesthetic. They were the subjects of an Aesthetic Issue article in artnet News where the magazine admitted that there was a “certain question” about the artists’ motives for displaying their artwork so prominently. Delay was not only deflating Koons' sculptures and plugging them back in to display on the museum wall, but also posting a video on his website of the sculptures slowly deflating. The art world tried to maintain its usual cool in response to the intense Koons' Deflationary viewing experience.

As for the OOOOO sculpture, the digital future Koons is building in his sculpture is a jumble of hopeful imaginings, dumber than the balloons it’s lifting. It’s uncertain if a gold prototype of this sculpture can be saved when deflation sets in.

GPT-3