DAMIEN HIRST
Damien Hirst is a British Conceptual artist known for his controversial take on beauty and found-art objects.
He explores the tensions and uncertainties at the core of human experience. Love, desire, belief and the struggle of living with the knowledge of death are all investigated, often in unconventional and unexpected ways. However, science and our unquestioning faith in the power of pharmaceuticals is perhaps one of Hirst’s most enduring themes. These ideas are investigated in the installation Pharmacy (1992) as well as in the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ and ‘Instrument Cabinets’ which display a cornucopia of reflective, precision-tooled surgical implements within steel and glass cases. Other sculptures are more celebratory in tone such as Hymn (1999-2001), a polychrome bronze sculpture which reveals the musculature and internal organs of the human body as they are presented in toy-like anatomical models enlarged to a monumental scale.
Damien Hirst’s wide-ranging practice includes installation, sculpture, painting and drawing. Consistently challenging the boundaries between art, science and religion, his visceral, visually arresting work has made him a leading artist of his generation.
Along with Liam Gillick, Tracey Emin, and Sarah Lucas, Hirst was part of the Young British Artists movement that rose to prominence in the early 1990s. Born on June 7, 1965 in Bristol, United Kingdom, Hirst was raised in Leeds. As a student at Goldsmiths College in London, his work caught the eye of the collector and gallerist Charles Saatchi, who became an early patron. Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)—a large vitrine containing an Australian tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde—was financed by Saatchi and helped to launch the artist’s career. Hirst went on to win the coveted Turner Prize in 1995. In 2012, he showed what went on to be one of his most controversial work in decades, the installation In and Out of Love, which consisted of two white windowless rooms in which over 9,000 butterflies flitted around and died. In 2015 Hirst opened the Newport Street Gallery in London, which grew from his long-term ambition to share his art collection with the public.
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.
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 Center for British Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, The Broad Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fondazione Prada, and Museo Jumex, among many others.
Damien Hirst currently lives and works in London and Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.