‘It's dignified to the Balloon Dog’: Jeff Koons on partnering with Hublot

‘A watch unites many aspects of thought,’ says Jeff Koons. ‘What does it mean to be alive, what defines our existence? Time comes into play quite quickly when we start to think philosophically of defining experience.’

Jeff Koons, who has partnered with Hublot on a new series of watches, has more in common with the brand than may first appear. Both share a preoccupation with a rich materiality and meticulous engineering, putting craft at the heart of creation. Both, too, share a beginning – Hublot was established in 1980, the same year Koons staged his first exhibition. Since then, Koons has gone on to establish a distinctive artistic identity, encompassed primarily in his translation of quotidian, everyday items – toys, basketballs, vacuum cleaners, balloon dogs – into large-scale, mirror-polished artworks.

It is the Balloon Dog sculptures, part of Koons’ Celebration series begun in the mid 1990s, which inspire the gleaming Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog watches. Available in three versions – mirror-polished stainless steel or polished anodised aluminum in bright red or blue – the watches appear to breathe and sigh, the result of a softening of their elements, from the screw heads to the sapphire crystal. Their sculptural cases and padded metallic leather straps appear as if puffed up by air.

‘The watch presents itself in a manner that I think is dignified to the balloon dog,’ says Koons. ‘I have to pinch myself a little bit, but I think it's relatively fair to say that a balloon dog is an iconic, defining sculpture for this part of the 21st century that we live in. The watch has that playfulness of the idea of a balloon dog, but at the same time, it has the seriousness of the conceptual part. It shows how a balloon dog not only represents an optimism for the moment, but it also refers back to the image of a balloon dog through time, and there is the realisation it is also tied to the profound.’

For Koons, the balloon dog acts as an analogy for what it means to be human, its inflated surfaces a nod to the act of inhaling and exhaling which keeps us alive. It is a philosophy that becomes more poignant when it takes its squishy and anthropomorphic horological form. ‘If we think of a balloon dog, the puffiness, it's an interface to the external world. And as a human, our interface is skin. A balloon dog is normally in latex, or in my sculpture and the watch, in stainless steel. If you think about that form and inflation to our internal organs, it’s tied to this. It has both this external optimism, but also this profoundness and the mystery of being.’

The collaboration process was a pleasure for Koons, who also enjoyed an insight into Hublot, he adds. ‘The scale of the company is unbelievable, as is being able to achieve this type of craftsmanship within milling, using all the technologies today. There is also the commitment to training all these new young people, in order to maintain this history of craftsmanship and to be able to realise the watches. These timepieces depend on all this human engineering. I was very moved by it. To be able to meet with people to see what they felt challenged by, and feel challenged in return – it's not a conscious process, but it's one that happens naturally within an individual and also in collaborations. You push each other to take it a little further.’

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A version of this article will appear in the November 2026 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 8 October in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.