Damien Hirst, Tate Modern.
4 April – 9 September 2012
This was the first time that I have voluntarily gone to see Damien Hirst’s work, of course I’ve learnt of his work from reading reviews in newspapers and I supposed this nourished my sceptical position and unwillingness to seek a deeper engagement with the work even when encountering it at group shows, collections etc. I felt that this retrospective was the right time and place for me to discover more. I must say my dubious mind-set had its advantage as there was a novelty in seeing a curation of his greatest, most sensational works.
I entered the gallery and admired Damien Hirst’s early
Spot Paintings from when he was still at, Goldsmith College. The raw, gloopy
painterly qualities of the spots and the faded colour palette of the household
acrylics had far more character and appeal (this could be because I’m a recent graduate)
as opposed to his more recent spot paintings that have a prestine, sharp,
formulated, commercial manifestation. This
feeling of rawness versus gleaming execution was something that remained
with me during the show: it may be a case of taste, an aversion towards the
transition or reinterpretation of the old qualities of the masters to a more
modern, repetitive and robotic expression. But, it
became apparent that these divergent forces have to exist at least to be in
harmony with the recurrent theme in this exhibition that wavers between life
and death. For instance, there is a sense of longevity and termination in depiction
of life-cycles in the animal vitrines and more figuratively in the spot
paintings that possess endurance yet death in their mind-numbering array.
I find Hirst’s articulation of ideas, for example interviews, written
pieces, far more compelling than his
grander visual gestures. I felt this when viewing a short simply executed video
in the exhibition, (essentially an
exercise in achieving a successful suicide). There, Hirst pressed an
unloaded gun onto various places on his
head and each time graphically listed the potential detriment if one mistakenly
positions the gun on one’s self to result
in a failed suicide. The piece ended with the best instruction on how to carry
out such a precarious act. This evocative meditation together with the clicks
of the trigger was enough to sustain the tension of being on the edge of life
and death and, even though displayed in
a dark corner of the exhibition, it was
the only piece that resonated with me: maybe because committing artistic
suicide is what Hirst does best!
the Love of Go(l)d by Eugenio Moreno