Newest Miami Condo Enticement: Modern Art - posted by Florida Fine Art Blog

A rendering of Oceana Bal Harbour, which will include works by artist Jeff Koons.

Newest Miami Condo Enticement: Modern Art
The Wall Street Journal
By Robbie Whelan

Condo associations share ownership of all sorts of things: pools, fitness rooms, freight elevators. Why not pieces of multimillion-dollar conceptual art?
Eduardo Costantini, a 66-year-old Argentine developer and art collector, is courting buyers at his second U.S. project, Oceana Bal Harbour in South Florida, by offering them ownership of two works by Jeff Koons, the New York-based artist famous for producing high-art versions of everyday objects.

Jeff Koons

The artwork at Oceana Bal Harbour will include: ‘Ballerina (Seated),’ scheduled completion date 2010-2014, by Jeff Koons.

The works, “Pluto and Proserpina” and “Ballerina” are both larger-than-life sized sculptures that Mr. Costantini says he purchased last year for $14 million. The first is an 11-foot tall work that depicts the classic theme of the rape of Proserpina, the Roman goddess of the spring, by Pluto, lord of the underworld. The sculpture is made out of chromium and live plants, and covered in gold coloring; the developer plans to place it in front of a reflecting pool the breezeway of the apartment condo complex, which is designed by Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Miami firm Arquitectonica.

The other work, a sculpture of a seated ballerina that resembles in style some of Koons’s balloon-animal inspired work, will sit at the other end of the breezeway. One of the two Koons works, “Pluto and Proserpina,” will first be lent to the Whitney Museum in New York to be shown in a retrospective of Mr. Koons’s work. The Bal Harbour condo is set to start construction later this year and be completed in 2016.

The developer says he is not specifically targeting art collectors to buy the condos, but having modern art in the building is part of Miami’s development as an international, cosmopolitan city. Units in the building are expected to start at $3 million.

Jeff Koons

The other piece of artwork by Jeff Koons at the building will be: ‘Pluto and Proserpina,’ 2010-2013.

“Miami is becoming truly a metropolis, and Jeff Koons is a representation of that, with the visibility that he has, and the quality of his art,” Mr. Costantini said. “You have like, citizens of the world, who travel a lot, and have more than two residences, but they have the sensitivity to appreciate good things, good quality.”

The price of the Koons works, as well as the cost of maintaining and insuring the sculptures, will be included in the sales prices and maintenance fees of the 250 condo units in the building. Mr. Costantini’s company, Consultatio, plans to invest about $600 million in the property, he said, and at sell-out, the units are projected to be collectively worth more than $1 billion.

The commonly owned art model has been done before, but usually with lower-profile artists. Other times, the art in question is part of the structure of the building. At Jorge Perez’s Icon Brickell, one of the most ambitious boom-era condo projects in Miami, designer Philippe Starck lined up monumental sculptures resembling Easter Island-style human heads that appear to be supporting the towers’ bulk. The artworks are also owned by the building’s residents.

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