Artist Spotlight
Since emerging onto the international art scene in the late 1980s, Damien Hirst has created installations, sculptures, paintings, and drawings that examine the complex relationships between art and beauty, religion and science, and life and death. From serialized paintings exploring color and its effects on the eye to cabinets arranged with pills, medicines, or surgical instruments, his work challenges contemporary belief systems, tracing the uncertainties that lie at the heart of human experience.
Created in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one week at a time, whose exhibitions have been affected by the health crisis. A single artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Damien Hirst features a recent work by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
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Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2020
Damien Hirst: Visual Candy
James Fox considers the origins of Damien Hirst’s Visual Candy paintings on the occasion of a recent exhibition of these early works in Hong Kong.
Damien Hirst: Colour Space Paintings
Blake Gopnik examines the artist’s “dot” paintings in relation to the history of representation in Western art, in which dabs of paint have served as fundamental units of depiction and markers of objective truth.
Truth Revealed: Damien Hirst and James Fox on Ashley Bickerton
In conversation with James Fox, Damien Hirst reflects on the artwork of his longtime friend.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2021
The Fall 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Damien Hirst’s Reclining Woman (2011) on its cover.
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.
Sydney Stutterheim meditates on the power and possibilities of small-format artworks throughout time.
In the Studio: Damien Hirst’s Veil Paintings
Damien Hirst speaks about his Veil paintings with Gagosian’s Alison McDonald. “I wanted to make paintings that were a celebration,” he says, “and that revealed something and obscured something at the same time.”
Related Exhibitions
Related News
Exhibition
Damien Hirst
The Light That Shines
March 2–June 23, 2024
Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
chateau-la-coste.com
Damien Hirst takes over the entire estate at Château La Coste, filling its 500 acres and five exhibition pavilions, designed by world-renowned architects such as Oscar Niemeyer, Renzo Piano, and Richard Rogers, with sculptures and paintings from some of his most iconic series. The presentation also features work that has never been exhibited before, including The Empress Paintings, Cosmos Paintings, and sculptures from his Meteorites and Satellites series. A selection of outdoor sculptures are sited across the estate, including at Frank Gehry’s Music Pavilion and the Tadao Ando Art Centre, in addition to artwork inside the pavilions.
Installation view, Damien Hirst: The Light That Shines, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, March 2–June 23, 2024. Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2024. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Exhibition
Damien Hirst
Where the Land Meets the Sea
July 20–August 18, 2023
Phillips, London
www.phillips.com
This exhibition features oil-on-canvas paintings from three series by Damien Hirst—Coast Paintings, Sea Paintings, and Seascapes—many of which have never before been seen publicly. The works are inspired by the artist’s pastime of walking on the beach and watching the sea, most recently in the United Kingdom during the winter, and draw influence from Abstract Expressionism, specifically Robert Motherwell’s Beside the Sea paintings from the 1960s. Where the Land Meets the Sea coincides with a drop on the HENI Primary digital platform. For more information on the works, please contact the gallery at inquire@gagosian.com.
Installation view, Damien Hirst: Where the Land Meets the Sea, Phillips, London, July 20–August 18, 2023. Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Video
Damien Hirst
Cherry Blossoms
Filmed over the course of a year, this video, produced by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, on the occasion of the exhibition Damien Hirst: Cherry Blossoms, offers a rare glimpse at Hirst’s creative process, providing keys to understanding his work. In the video, Hirst and art historian Tim Marlow discuss how the artist conceived and created the Cherry Blossom paintings.
Still from “Damien Hirst: Cherry Blossoms.” Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Damien Hirst
The Weight of Things
Open from October 26, 2023
Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art, Munich
www.muca.eu
The Weight of Things—the first major survey of Damien Hirst’s work in Germany—presented by the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art (MUCA), Munich spans forty years of the artist’s career. The exhibition features over forty installations, sculptures, and paintings, some of which have never been seen before, as well as work from his most iconic series, including Natural History, Spin Paintings, Medicine Cabinets, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, and more.
Installation view, Damien Hirst: The Weight of Things, Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art, Munich, open from October 26, 2023. Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
On View
Damien Hirst
Vivir Para Siempre (Por Un Momento)
Through August 25, 2024
Museo Jumex, Mexico City
www.fundacionjumex.org
This exhibition, whose title translates as To Live Forever (For a While), provides a comprehensive overview of Damien Hirst’s work between 1986 and 2019. Curated by Ann Gallagher in close collaboration with the artist, it features around sixty works including some of Hirst’s most iconic series, such as Natural History, Spin Paintings, Medicine Cabinets, and Cherry Blossoms.
Installation view, Damien Hirst: Vivir Para Siempre (Por Un Momento), Museo Jumex, Mexico City, March 23–August 25, 2024. Artwork © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2024. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2024
Closed
Colección Jumex
Todo Se Vuelve Más Ligero
November 18, 2023–February 11, 2024
Museo Jumex, Mexico City
www.fundacionjumex.org
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Museo Jumex has invited Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, New York, to curate an exhibition drawn entirely from the Jumex collection and occupying the whole building. Featuring work by more than seventy international artists, the exhibition, whose title translates to Everything Gets Lighter, brings together diverse works in a poetic meditation on the meaning of light and manifestations of lightness. Work by Damien Hirst, Steven Parrino, Ed Ruscha, and Rudolf Stingel is included.
Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2001–02, Museo Jumex, Mexico City © Rudolf Stingel
Closed
Storie di pietra
October 13, 2023–January 14, 2024
Villa Medici–Académie de France à Rome
www.villamedici.it
This exhibition, whose title translates to Stories of Stones, brings together nearly two hundred works, from the oldest terrestrial mineral dating back 4.4 billion years to the latest mineral, Sentimentite, created by contemporary artist Agnieszka Kurant. The exhibition explores the idea that stones have inspired artists from all eras. Work by Damien Hirst, Henry Moore, Giuseppe Penone, Pablo Picasso, and Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, Rock, 2007 © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Philippe Migeat