Paris: Art – Gagosian Gallery – Damien
Hirst
“I was always a colorist, I’ve always had a phenomenal love of color... I
mean, I just move color around on its own. So that’s where the spot paintings
came from—to create that structure to do those colors, and do nothing. I
suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of
color.” Damien Hirst.
The Damien Hirst, The Complete Spot Paintings 1986– 2011 exhibition opened
worldwide on January 12 and is taking place at once across all of
Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles,
Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong.
Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, it makes use of
this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to
locality.
Paris: Art – Gagosian Gallery – Damien
Hirst
"I often get asked about the spot paintings – “I love your work, but why
do you do those stupide spots? They’re not good paintings.” Or “The paintings
are great/better than your other works, but (Gerhard) Richter already did
it.” They have nothing to do with
Richter or Larry Poons or Bridget Riley or Josef Albers or even Op art. They’re about an urge or the need to be a
painter above and beyond the object of a painting. I’ve often said that they are like
sculptures of paintings.” Damien Hirst.
Included in the exhibition are more than 300 paintings, from the first spot
on board that Hirst created in 1986; to the smallest spot painting comprising
half a spot and measuring 1 x 1/2 inch (1996); to a monumental work comprising
only four spots, each 60 inches in diameter; and up to the most recent spot
painting completed in 2011 containing 25,781 spots that are each 1 millimeter
in diameter, with no single color ever repeated.
Paris: Art – Gagosian Gallery – Damien
Hirst
“With the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally
important thing in any kind of art.
Which is the harmony of where color can exist on its own, interacting
with other colors in a perfect format… It’s like they don’t go wrong.” Damien
Hirst.
Save the Date: “Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011”
precedes the first major museum retrospective of Hirst’s work opening at TateModern in London in April, 2012.