Tate Modern: Exhibition 4 April – 9 September 2012
"This will be the first substantial survey of his work in a British institution and will bring together key works from over twenty years. The exhibition will include iconic sculptures from his Natural History series, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991, in which he suspended a shark in formaldehyde. Also included will be vitrines such as A Thousand Years from 1990, medicine cabinets, pill cabinets and instrument cabinets in addition to seminal paintings made throughout his career using butterflies and flies as well as spots and spins. The two-part installation In and Out of Love, not shown in its entirety since its creation in 1991 and Pharmacy 1992 will be among the highlights of the exhibition".Tate Modern web site. Take a virtual guided tour with the artist on the link here.
The words “shark” and “Hirst” will be forever linked in our minds. Abandon all arguments and opinions, just look and see the deadly beauty in this piece. The soft aquamarine liquid. The interrupted form of the shark. The three sterile white grids that enclose it. A shark must keep moving, if it stops swimming, it dies. It is frozen, but forever moving, immortal. This is only my idea, but that is what art should do, make us think out of our comfort zone.
Beautiful Two Paths Painting with Butterflies (2007)
He produces the spin paintings on a brilliant Heath Robinson type contraption, a sort of mad professor painting machine. It’s like drawing with your non dominant hand; you become an observer as you draw, because your brain is confused. This machine is a robot version of the artists’ non dominant hand. Anything could happen. I am sure he was bored with the spin paintings, wanted to move the idea on, so he combined spinning with butterflies. This painting is decorative; he was inspired by stained glass windows and kaleidoscopes when he produced his butterfly works. (Or rather he arranged for his outworkers to produce them).
Ventolin’ (2005). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates
He spent hours looking through pharmaceutical books to find names for each dot painting. I like sets of stuff, titles and names for groups of objects. He is a collector, curator and showman. He pays attention to detail and displays his work brilliantly. There is a lot to learn from MR. Hirst.
He also has work in the V & A the ‘British Design 1948 - 2012’ exhibition which brings together over 350 important and iconic objects. The exhibition includes an installation of pieces from Hirst’s restaurant venture Pharmacy. Amongst the objects on display, are works of art and furniture taken from Hirst’s 1998 restaurant venture ‘Pharmacy’. Included is the vast, fibreglass sculpture which provided the restaurant’s centrepiece, ‘Molecular Structure.’
"Sweeping it under the carpet" Hirst and Banksy collaborate to produce artwork to raise money for AIDS. Banksy said “give me a painting and I’ll mess around with it”.
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