Damien Hirst

I had my stomach pumped as a child because I ate pills thinking they were sweets. . . . I can’t understand why some people believe completely in medicine and not in art, without questioning either.
—Damien Hirst

Gagosian is pleased to present Visual Candy and Natural History, a selection of paintings and sculptures by Damien Hirst from the early to mid-1990s. The exhibition coincides with Hirst’s most ambitious and complex project to date, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, on view at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice until December 3.

Since emerging on the international art scene in the late 1980s as the protagonist of a generation of British artists, Hirst has created installations, sculptures, paintings, and drawings that examine the complex relationships between art, beauty, religion, science, life and death. Through series as diverse as the Spot Paintings, Medicine Cabinets, Natural History, and the butterfly Kaleidoscope Paintings, he has investigated and challenged contemporary belief systems, tracing the uncertainties that lie at the heart of human experience. This exhibition juxtaposes the joyful, colorful abstractions of his Visual Candy paintings with the clinical forms of his Natural History sculptures.

The Visual Candy paintings allude to movements including Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art, while the Natural History sculptures—glass tanks containing biological specimens preserved in formaldehyde—reflect the visceral realities of scientific investigation through minimalist design. Despite their stark formal differences, the two series were made during the same period and share conceptual foundations: an exploration of the relationships between pleasure and pain, transience and permanence, logic and emotion.