ONE BALL TOTAL EQUILIBRIUM TANK BY JEFF KOONS

In Jeff Koons's One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985), a Spaldingbasketball floats in the center of a glass tank that stands on a f our-legged blackmetal structure. It has been called one of the defining works of the 1980s--but alsodescribed (by such critics as Cr aig Owens, Rosalind Krauss, and Hal Foster) asan endgame, misleading, and repulsive. The workpresents what the artist called the ult imate state of being--neitherdeath nor life but the absence of change.