Kathy Aoki creates a faux-museum exhibit depicting a fictional character who collects and destroys artwork by Jeff Koons. The immersive satirical tableau, with a mesmeric diorama and new works on paper, brings the viewer in on the joke that reveals the hypocrisy and patriarchy of the art world, represented by Koon’s enormous financial success as a male artist who focuses on the banal.

Aoki uses humor to explore gender and beauty issues through mock historical artifacts and documentation. Leveraging the exaggerated authority of institutional settings, à la institutional critique artist Andrea Fraser, she includes wry, museum-style labeling to present the work.