Hirst is perhaps best known for his ‘Natural History’ series of works which present animals in vitrines suspended in formaldehyde. These iconic sculptures such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) or Mother and Child (Divided)(1993), aim to recast fundamental questions about the meaning of life and the fragility of biological existence.

Hirst uses the vitrines as both a window and barrier, seducing the viewer visually while also providing a minimalist geometry to frame, contain and objectify his subject. He first constructed a steel and glass tank in the seminal work A Thousand Years (1990), in which a miniature life cycle is created by flies hatching, feeding and then dying at the hands of an insect-O-cutor. In many of his other vitrine sculptures from the 1990s such as The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991) or The Asthmatic Escaped (1992), he implies a human presence through its absence, including relic-like objects such as clothes, cigarettes, ashtrays, tables and chairs.

Science and our unquestioning faith in the power of pharmaceuticals remains 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.

In 2007 Hirst created what is arguably his most provocative work: For the Love of God, a life-sized platinum cast of a human skull, covered entirely by 8,601 VVS to flawless pavé set diamonds. Although without precedent in art history, the work operates as a traditional memento mori using an object to address the transience of human existence.

Hirst is equally well-known for his paintings such as the series of works with butterflies suspended in thick layers of gloss paint and the ‘Kaleidoscope Paintings’ where thousands of butterfly wings are arranged in mandala-like patterns. In the ‘Entomology’ paintings from 2013, he revisits this subject-matter again using butterflies interspersed with thousands of highly coloured insects and spiders to reflect the fragility of life. The corresponding ‘Entomology Cabinets’ utilise the same components but place them in precise horizontal or vertical rows inside minimal and reflective wall-mounted stainless steel frames. With each species arranged in separate rows, the overall effect is one of scientific ordering or industrial production, in part a reference to the Victorian era and it's predilection for visual displays that reflected man's control over nature.

In the ‘Spin’ series, Hirst uses a machine that centrifugally disperses the paint as it is steadily poured onto the canvas. The chance spontaneity of the ‘Spins’ stands in contrast to the more formulaic ‘Spot’ series which have a rigorous grid of uniformly sized dots in different colours. Both series, however, suggest the idea of an imaginary mechanical painter. Contrastingly, in 2009 Hirst embarked on a series of paintings that represented a radical shift, returning to painting alone, what he has described as the ‘most direct form of production, with all the attendant artistic consequences: facing the canvas, the individual painterly act, the creative process, the artist’s emotional balance – alone; being at the mercy of issues raised by the picture, at the mercy of the creator, of oneself…’

In 2017, Hirst presented his ten-year long project Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable at Punta Della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Examining notions of collecting and the mechanisms of art history, as well as human endeavour in the face of mortality, the project is manifested through almost 190 separate works. These focus on a series of treasures and artefacts collected by the freed Roman slave Cif Amotan II, hauled from a ship wreck in the Indian Ocean which had lain untouched for 2,000 years. Weaving fact and fiction to create a labyrinthine narrative, Hirst combines valuable archaeological relics hauled from the wreck – some of which are so encrusted with coral and marine life that their forms are unrecognisable – with his own sculptures, documentary photography, video and drawing. The project highlights the power of myth, told through a hierarchy of objects that range from coins and plates to monumental sculptures, to expose ideas of value and the mutability of history, belief and art itself.

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, UK. He lives and works in London and Gloucestershire. Solo exhibitions include Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, Venice (2017), National Gallery of Art, Washington (2016), Astrup Fearnley Musset, Oslo (2015), Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (2013), Tate Modern, London (2012), Benaki Museum, Athens and Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2011), Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2011), Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (2010), Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, Monte Carlo (2010), The Wallace Collection, London (2009), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2005) and Archaeological Museum, Naples (2004). Hirst has participated in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Sculpture on the Move', Kunstmuseum Basel (2016), Yokohama Triennale (2011) ‘The Luminous Interval’, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2011),‘Pop Life: Art in a Material World’, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Hamburger Kunsthalle and Tate Modern, London (2009/2010), ‘Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today’, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008), ‘Play Back’, ARC/Musée de la Ville de Paris (2007), ‘Re-Object’, Kunsthaus Bregenz (2007), ‘Into Me/Out of Me’, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006), In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Tate Britain (2004), the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and ‘Century City’, Tate Modern (2001). He received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin in 1994 and the Turner Prize in 1995.

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