Damien Hirst, 'Aubade - Crown of Glory', 2006
Butterflies and household gloss paint on canvas
115-7/8 x 96-1/8 inches
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Philip Larkin, excerpt from 'High Windows'
Having been roundly attacked by New York's critics for his exhibition of hyper-realist paintings there in 2005, Damien Hirst is shrewdly venturing further west to the celebrity-friendly, collector-rich land of Hollywood for his new show. 'Superstition', Damien Hirst's first exhibition in LA for over a decade, opens at the Gagosian gallery's Beverly Hills outpost on Thursday. In his new series of paintings, Hirst expands on the iconic motif of the butterfly, taking inspiration from stained glass church windows. The titles for each painting (or at least one of their titles - each painting has two, the second a direct reference to religious iconography) are borrowed from Philip Larkin's collection of poems 'High Windows', one of whose themes is the increasing loss of faith and sense of emptiness in post-war Britain.
For this new series, Damien Hirst, with the help of around 25 assistants, has created over 50 paintings whose classical shapes and compositions mirror those of ecclesiastic architecture, such as the soaring gothic arch in 'Aubade - Crown of Glory', the intricate form of the rose window in 'Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel - Conception'. The works all portray an ornate, fractal geometry and perfect, mathematical symmetry with hundreds of butterflies stuck onto high gloss black backgrounds, an idea Hirst took from decorative Victorian tea trays.
In this new series Hirst explores the same themes which have dominated his work over the last 25 years - desire and fear, life and death, reason and faith, love and hate - this time drawing on the iconography of religion and tapping into current concerns about religious conflict. In a recent interview with the LA Times (Hirst has refused to do any interviews with the British press), he explained: "I think everything's in a bit of a crisis," he says. "I'm drawn to things that fail, and that kind of old religious thing, the idea of the soul - it's a security blanket that's been around for a long time. Scientists are trying to make sense of the world; religion does that, and art does that. The confusion - it's a soup, and we're all in it. We're just trying to find a way through the darkness.'
Damien Hirst is also showing paintings from this new series in London at Gagosian's Davies Street branch in the West End.
Damien Hirst: Superstition
22 February - 5 April
Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
T: +1 310 271 9400 |
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'The Explosion - Exalted', 2006
Butterflies and household gloss on canvas
84 inches diameter
