Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst, born 1965 in Bristol, is one of Britain's most famous artists. He studied at Goldsmiths College in London, where he finsihed his studies in 1989. In 1988, he curated the student's exhibition "Freeze", which was a great success and considerably boosted his career. In 1995 Hirst wins the famous Turner Prize. His works can be divided into three main groups: paintings, cabinet sculptures and glass tank pieces. The spot paintings show randomly arranged coloured spots and are named after pharmaceutical chemicals and products. For his spin paintings, Hirst threw paint on a spinning wheel. Every painting's unique composition results from the centrifugal force. The cabinet sculptures are installations, for which Hirst put surgical instruments and pillboxes with fastidious arrangement into cupboards and shelves. His glass tank pieces contain dead or disassembled animals. The corpses are conserved in formaldehyde. One of his most famous works is the glass tank installation "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", originated in 1991. It exhibits a huge tiger shark, preserved in an aquarium filled with formaldehyde. The liquid resembles water, in order to make the shark seem alive. The spectator is directly confronted with his worst fears, apparently facing death. For his 1991 installation "In and Out of Love", Hirst put hundreds of living butterflies into a gallery room, several of which hatching from pupae which were attached to monochrome canvases on the wall, as well as dead specimens embedded into gloss paint on canvases. His intention was to show one thing -the butterfly- at the same time as a living organism and as an aesthetic object. This also can be transferred to art, which can be viewed as a living and creative process, or a collection of masterpieces. One of his art's main aims is the examination of the processes of life and death. Hirst himself says that he wants to give those who look at his work energy to go away and think about their lives again.

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