Damien Hirst - Selected Works

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, UK. He lives and works in London and Gloucestershire. Since 1987, over 90 solo Damien Hirst exhibitions have taken place
worldwide, and he has been included in over 300 group shows. In 2012, Tate Modern, London presented a major retrospective survey of Hirst’s work in conjunction with
the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Hirst’s other solo exhibitions include Qatar Museums Authority, ALRIWAQ Doha (2013–2014); Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (2010);
Oceanographic Museum, Monaco (2010); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008); Astrup Fearnley Museet für Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005); Museo Archeologico Nazionale,
Naples (2004); Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, Pinault Collection, Venice (2017), Post Truth, Fake News & Alternative Facts, Haifa Museum, Israel (2019), Villa
Borghese, Rome (2021); Fondation Cartier, Paris (2021) amongst others.
Hirst is well-known for his paintings (and handmade editions) such as the series of works with butterflies suspended in thick layers of gloss paint and the ‘Kaleidoscope
Paintings’ where thousands of butterfly wings are arranged in mandala-like patterns. In the ‘Entomology’ paintings from 2013, he revisits this subject-matter again using
butterflies interspersed with thousands of highly coloured insects and spiders to reflect the fragility of life. The corresponding ‘Entomology Cabinets’ utilise the same
components but place them in precise horizontal or vertical rows inside minimal and reflective wall-mounted stainless-steel frames. With each species arranged in
separate rows, the overall effect is one of scientific ordering or industrial production, in part a reference to the Victorian era and its predilection for visual displays that
reflected man's control over nature.
In the ‘Spin’ series, Hirst uses a machine that centrifugally disperses the paint as it is steadily poured onto the canvas. The chance spontaneity of the ‘Spins’ stands in
contrast to the more formulaic ‘Spot’ series which have a rigorous grid of uniformly sized dots in different colours. Both series, however, suggest the idea of an imaginary
mechanical painter. Contrastingly, in 2009 Hirst embarked on a series of paintings that represented a radical shift, returning to painting alone, what he has described as the
‘most direct form of production, with all the attendant artistic consequences: facing the canvas, the individual painterly act, the creative process, the artist’s emotional
balance – alone; being at the mercy of issues raised by the picture, at the mercy of the creator, of oneself…
’His work features in major collections including the British Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate, the
Stedelijk Museum, the Yale Centre for British Art, The Broad Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fondazione Prada, and Museo Jumex, among many others.