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Damien Hirst

Forgotten Promises

January 18–March 19, 2011
Hong Kong

Installation view  Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view

Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view

Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view

Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Installation view

Artwork © Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Works Exhibited

Damien Hirst, Inachis io in Buddleja davidii, 2009–10 Oil on canvas, 12 × 18 inches (30.5 × 45.7 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

Damien Hirst, Inachis io in Buddleja davidii, 2009–10

Oil on canvas, 12 × 18 inches (30.5 × 45.7 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

Damien Hirst, Heliconius charithonia in Tagetes, 2009–10 Oil on canvas, 20 × 30 inches (50.8 × 76.2 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Heliconius charithonia in Tagetes, 2009–10

Oil on canvas, 20 × 30 inches (50.8 × 76.2 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Lycaena phlaeas, 2009–10 Oil on canvas, 20 × 30 inches (50.8 × 76.2 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Lycaena phlaeas, 2009–10

Oil on canvas, 20 × 30 inches (50.8 × 76.2 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Beautiful Magnificent Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire Painting (with Diamonds), 2007 Cubic zirconia and household gloss on canvas, diameter: 84 inches (213.4 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Beautiful Magnificent Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire Painting (with Diamonds), 2007

Cubic zirconia and household gloss on canvas, diameter: 84 inches (213.4 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, For Heaven's Sake, 2008  Platinum and pink diamonds, 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅞ inches (8.5 × 8.5 × 10 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, For Heaven's Sake, 2008

Platinum and pink diamonds, 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅞ inches (8.5 × 8.5 × 10 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, For Heaven's Sake, 2008  Platinum and pink diamonds, 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅞ inches (8.5 × 8.5 × 10 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, For Heaven's Sake, 2008

Platinum and pink diamonds, 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅜ × 3 ⅞ inches (8.5 × 8.5 × 10 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Tears of Joy, 2010 Stainless steel, glass, and cubic zirconia, 50 ¼ × 35 ¼ × 4 ⅛ inches (127.5 × 89.5 × 10.5 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Tears of Joy, 2010

Stainless steel, glass, and cubic zirconia, 50 ¼ × 35 ¼ × 4 ⅛ inches (127.5 × 89.5 × 10.5 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Pain, 2010 Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and lab rubies, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Pain, 2010

Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and lab rubies, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Pain, 2010 (detail) Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and lab rubies, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Pain, 2010 (detail)

Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and lab rubies, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Lost Friends, 2010 Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and cubic zirconia, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Lost Friends, 2010

Gold-plated stainless steel, glass, and cubic zirconia, 22 × 28 inches (56 × 71 cm)
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain, 2008 Silver, 35 ⅞ × 16 ½ × 9 ⅞ inches (91 × 42 × 25 cm), edition of 3© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Damien Hirst, Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain, 2008

Silver, 35 ⅞ × 16 ½ × 9 ⅞ inches (91 × 42 × 25 cm), edition of 3
© Damien Hirst and Hirst Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

About

Diamonds are about perfection and clarity and wealth and sex and death and immortality. They are a symbol of everything that’s eternal, but then they have a dark side as well.
—Damien Hirst

To inaugurate the Hong Kong exhibition space, Gagosian is pleased to present Forgotten Promises, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Damien Hirst.

In recent years, Hirst has developed his familiar iconography—the skull, the diamond, and the butterfly—to explore fundamental ideas about existence. His work highlights the duality that lies at the heart of human experience, in our inexorable struggles between life and death, beauty and decay, desire and fear, love and loss.

While Hirst’s earlier Fact paintings focused on the brutality and violence of life using documentary images found in newspapers and magazines; or the beauty and agony of childbirth, taken from photographs of the birth of his own son; or the light-refracted brilliance of the world’s most famous diamonds, the new Butterfly Fact Paintings capture dramatic moments in the fleeting lives of different species of butterflies. For Hirst, the butterfly is a symbol of the beauty and fragility of life. Close-up images of butterflies, sourced from science libraries, are painted in oil with painstaking attention to realistic detail. “Why else would you do it, when you could just get a photograph that looks identical?” Hirst has said. “But it’s not the same thing, is it? A photograph is from a moment, a split second. Painting is about stopping to look at the world, considering it, and giving it more and more importance.”

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