Damien Hirst

Beautiful, amore, gasp, eyes going into the top of the head and fluttering painting, 1997

 On Wednesday I visited the highly hyped new Damien Hirst exhibition at the Tate Modern. I must say it’s basically the best exhibition I have ever been to mainly because I have always been a huge fan of his work, but also because from looking at this work in it’s physical form with his thoughts has allowed me to properly understand the concepts of his art and how his background heavily influenced him.

  Growing up in Leeds Damien Hirst was expected to fit a certain criteria his mother had set him; it soon became obvious that Hirst wanted to pursue a career in the arts and has made a ton of money in doing so. His eccentric ideas have provided fascinating works based mostly around the topics birth, death and decay; in his exhibition a collection of his work provides a fascinating thought provoking insight into his mind.

A Thousand Years, 1990

  I particularly enjoyed his project “A Thousand Years” a sculpture of a vitrine is split in half by a glass wall: a hole in this partition allows newly hatched flies from a box reminiscent of a die in one half, to fly into the other where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs. The corpses of the flies inside the vitrine accumulate whilst the works are on exhibition. In ‘A Thousand Years’, a decaying cow’s head is presented beneath the fly-killer. 

A Thousand Years, 1990

  It’s not a particularly aesthetically pleasing sculpture but the thought behind it and detail makes it beyond fascinating. Damien Hirst has really hit the nail on the head with successfully providing a visual display upon the exploration into the research of life and death and in-between. His use of movement with flies allowed suspending things without strings or wire and makes you realize the extent of how precious life is.

  Hirst has many talents but the way in which he provokes reaction to the art forms he assembles, then closely narrates with his concepts really makes you think and wonder exactly how one person could create such a grand intelligent understanding of the world yet capture imagination in all that view it. I was very happy after visiting the Tate Modern and am glad to have been able to have to opportunity to be in the same room as such magnificent art with admirable narration throughout. 

I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds, 2006

http://www.damienhirst.com/
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/damien-hirst
(notes taken from exhibition pentathlete also)