Hirst is a natural fit for JOAN because the work is visually direct but conceptually loaded. Beauty, mortality, money and desire are presented without requiring the viewer to choose between enjoying the image and thinking about what it means.
Damien Hirst examines life, death, belief, value and beauty through a practice that ranges from preserved animals and medicine cabinets to spot paintings, butterflies, diamonds and large bodies of editioned work. He is one of the most prominent artists to emerge from Britain in the late twentieth century.
Born in Bristol in 1965 and raised in Leeds, Hirst studied at Goldsmiths in London. While still a student he organised the 1988 exhibition Freeze, an event closely associated with the emergence of the Young British Artists. His early vitrines and works using preserved animals established his international reputation.
Serial structures are fundamental to Hirst’s practice. Pharmaceutical packaging, coloured spots, butterflies, cherry blossoms and jewel-like imagery transform systems of classification into meditations on mortality and desire. His work repeatedly moves between clinical order and visual seduction.
Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 and has exhibited in major institutions worldwide. His unusually direct engagement with production, editions, galleries, auctions and branding has also made the economics of contemporary art part of the public conversation surrounding his work.
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