keff joons: interactive inflatable art arrives in brooklyn
In a quiet, industrial pocket on the outskirts of Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, artist Cj Hendry unveils Keff Joons, her most colossal architectural intervention yet. Housed in a cavernous warehouse at 50 Gold Street, the work is less an exhibition and more a disorienting monument to scale and sensation. A tangled explosion of oversized inflatable ‘balloons,’ the work takes up nearly every inch of vertical and horizontal space, inviting visitors to climb into the chaos. At once playful and a little bit terrifying, the space distorts your sense of direction, weight, and proportion, to bring an experience that’s more akin to a bounce house crossed with an Escher drawing.
Keff Joons is on view from April 11th — 20th, 2025 at 50 Gold Street in Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill. It will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free, but lines are likely — Hendry’s installations have a reputation for drawing enthusiastic crowds.
image © designboom
cj hendry dissolves structure and play
Inspired by Jeff Koons’ balloon-animal iconography but veering off into absurdist territory, Cj Hendry has crafted something decidedly her own. Keff Joons asks: what happens when structure dissolves and play becomes the architecture? ‘While Jeff has transformed the balloon animal into an icon of art, I’ve cobbled together these balloon ‘knots’ that forgo structure and form and are totally ridiculous,’ the artist says. That irreverence is part of the appeal — it encourages visitors to interact, to climb, to trust the materials and their curiosity. Nothing is roped off, everything is touchable. Here, architecture isn’t static. It wobbles, it squeaks, it responds.
The installation takes shape as a tangle of individual oversized balloons in electric hues of red, green, pink, yellow, and purple. They are not arranged as disparate sculptures but rather meld into a dense, architectural knot. Keff Joons doesn’t just occupy space; it swallows it, with balloon arms coiling and sprawling across multiple rooms like a surreal organism. It’s immersive and ungraspable, forcing visitors to feel their way through the tangled mass, often on hands and knees. There’s no signage, no guidance — only the rubbery scent of vinyl, the squeak of air-shifting surfaces, and a thrill that lands somewhere between childhood joy and low-level adrenaline.
image © Cj Hendry Studio
Adjacent to the Keff Joons balloon labyrinth, Cj Hendry grounds the installation with a selection of her trademark hyper-realistic pencil drawings. Nine in total, the works zoom in on individual balloons — now suddenly delicate, isolated, and precise. There’s also a sculptural maquette of the entire installation, offering a bird’s-eye view of the chaos you’ve just scrambled through. These quieter, more contemplative pieces reveal the technical rigor behind the whimsy, highlighting the artist’s gift for straddling the line between spectacle and skill.
To experience Keff Joons, visitors must shed their shoes, sign a waiver, and suit up in orange grip socks — part uniform, part equalizer. It’s a logistical detail that adds to the sense of ritual. One is not just looking at art. Visitors are entering it, physically and psychologically. Hendry understands the power of participation, of turning viewers into climbers, sliders, and explorers. The experience is democratic, and hilariously impractical. No backpacks, no coats, no skirts. Just the viewer and the balloons.
image © Cj Hendry Studio
image © Cj Hendry Studio
image © Cj Hendry Studio