Jeff Koons at Gagosian

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The three huge, high-ceilinged rooms of the Gagosian Gallery on Brittania Street provided a suitably serene environment to contemplate Jeff Koons's recent exhibition, "Hulk Elvis," made up entirely of large canvases done in oil. The majority are 108 by 84 inches and composed of computer-generated images painted by Koons's guild of assistants. The works are defined by an iconic repetition of subject matter, which is dominated by two characters--the Incredible (iridescently green) Hulk and the cocoabrown face of an inflatable toy monkey displaying a fixed, unsettlingly benign smile. Both Hulk and monkey stare out unblinkingly wherever they appear.

Koons further introduces images of a smoke-belching locomotive, a horse-drawn carriage guided by a lone figure and, less often, Popeye the Sailor. These are painted a ghostly white that emphasizes their slowly disintegrating, or decaying, pixelated surfaces. A large, floating outline of a geisha emerges occasionally, done in long indistinct whips of mustardy yellow or rusty ocher. Several canvases include large color photographs of American birds.

The initial impact of the works is of pastiche or collage, but the elements are carefully organized and overlaid to suggest vestiges of historical artifacts. Koons seems to locate a heritage that links our current fashion-driven pop culture to an older (and more "authentic"?) pre-urban world. Clearly, he cherishes, even reveres, the comic book characters and trashy Hollywood icons as integral to a continually evolving American mythology with (as the title of the show suggests) Elvis Presley as its patron saint.

His relationship with his subject matter seems, in the end, less esthetic or cultural than devotional. As Calvin Tomkins writes in a New Yorker profile of Koons ("The Turnaround Artist," Apr. 23, 2007), he has long encouraged the viewer to place a "spiritual trust" in his work. Even the staring Hulks and monkeys appear more quiescent than confrontational, like the impassive faces of saints in religious icons. Still, this new work will not likely alleviate the general critical anxiety about whether one can--or should--trust Koons's unabashed claim for his art to excite in us a sense of the transcendent. The question this new work does raise is not how much we should trust Koons, but how much faith we choose to place in the monkey's smile.

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