Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011. An Exhibit of Candy-Color Dots

British artist Damien Hirst's best known works are his paintings, medicine cabinet sculptures, and glass tank installations. For the most part, his paintings have taken on two styles. One is an arrangement of color spots with titles that refer to pharmaceutical chemicals, known as Spot paintings. The second, his Spin paintings, are created by centrifugal force, when Hirst places his canvases on a spinner, and pours the paint as they spin.

Hirst's first spot paintings were made for the exhibition Freeze, which he organized in an empty warehouse in the London Docklands district, while he was a student at Goldsmiths College in 1988. Twenty years later, Hirst has produced more than six hundred such paintings on canvas.

The exhibition The Complete Spot  Paintings 1986-2011 by Damien Hirst will take place simultaneous at all Gagosian Gallery's eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on January 12, 2012. Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011 makes use of this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to locality.

Included in the exhibition are more than 300 paintings, from the first spot on board that Hirst created in 1986; to the smallest spot painting comprising half a spot and measuring 1x1/2 inch; to a monumental work comprising only four spots; and up to the most recent spot painting completed in 2011 containing 25,781 spots that are each i millimeter in diameter, with no single color ever repeated.

In conjunction with the exhibition will be the publication of The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, a fully illustrated catalogue of all spot paintings made by Hirst from 1986 to the present.

I was always a colorist, I've always had a phenomenal love of color.... I mean, I just move color around on its own. So that's where the spot paintings came from - to create that structure to do those colors, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of color.
~~ Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011

Methoxyverapamil, 1991

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Aminoantipyrine, 1992

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Controlled Substance Key Painting, 1994

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Levorphanol, 1995

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Iminobiotin Hydrazide, 1995-1996

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Bromchlorophenol Blue, 1996

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Eucatropine, 2005

Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011

Opening worldwide on Thursday, January 12, 2012 at Gagosian Gallery

Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
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Slowly Seeping through my Hands; The Wearable Art of Nikoline Liv Andersen

Why should we live if we must die? It is one of the questions Danish artist Nikoline Liv Andersen puts us in  this exhibition. With a plethora of bodies, thick fabrics, flowers and fruits, life's transience is reflected upon, man in defense against death and the body in decomposition. Through baroque vanitas-settings and references to the myth of Sisyphus - society's eternal quest for financial abundance in a life that undoubtedly lose all worldliness at the end - the project expresses a life without meaning that will inevitably end.

Also on exhibit is the project The Dance of the Deaf and Dumb Eye where Nikoline Liv Andersen examines the theory of the classic Japanese monkeys that naively shut themselves out of the world by not seeing, not hearing and not speaking. Monkeys housed in wigs a la Marie Antoinette and clothing sculptures are visualized through a counterpart to the French court of Louis XVI, whose excessive exuberance and poor communication between nobility and the people led to the French Revolution. The monkeys symbolize today's blind consumer.

Nikoline Liv Andersen graduated as a fashion designer from the Danish Design School in 2006. She works in the borderland between fashion and art, and her unique creations are made of materials such as fur  and plastic. She lives and works in Copenhagen.
" Since I was little, I had an endless fascination with aesthetic and visual story telling. My heart is beating and my fingers are itching to dress and dress up. I see it as a duty and a great motivation to push the borders of what you are able to wear and not to dwell in the land of compromises where existing target groups are being pleased."
~~ Nikoline Liv Andersen


The exhibition presents two new installations of textile works and a selection of past creations. "Slowly Seeping through my Hands" is currently on view at Horsens Kunstmuseum in Denmark.

The Dance of the Deaf and Dumb Eye by Nikoline Liv Andersen

Photos by Nicky de Silva

Glory by Nikoline Liv Andersen
Photos by Signe Vilstrup

Slowly Seeping through my Hands by Nikoline Liv Andersen
Photos by Svend Pedersen

Courtesy and copyright © Nikoline Liv Andersen

Nikoline Liv Andersen "Slowly Seeping through my Hands"

Horsens Kunstmuseum, Denmark

November 19, 2011 - February 5, 2012
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Jean-Michel Othoniel, " MY WAY "

An artist who has a passion for all sorts of metamorphoses, sublimations and transmutations, Jean-Michel Othoniel has a predilection for materials with reversible properties. From March 2, 2011, the Centre Pompidou will be the first major cultural institution to put on a one-man show of Jean-Michel Othoniel's work from the beginning of his career in 1987 to the present day, with more than 80 pieces on display.

In collaboration with the artist, the Centre Pompidou will offer a retrospective of his plastic work entitled My Way. Composed of an ensemble of 24 hitherto unseen works, the exhibition is mapped out in different stages involving research and experimentation up until the mid-90s, when Othoniel began to use sensitive materials like sulphur, phosphorus and wax, weaving his way between beauty and repulsion. The artist explores the boundary between the organic world and the natural world and questions the limits of the genre. After discovering glass, its color and the infinite artistic possibilities of the medium which combines strength and fragility, Othoniel's work took on a more sculptural quality and acquired a new monumentalism.


After the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition curated by Catherine Grenier, will travel to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul in the summer of 2011 and then to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in the fall, and last to the Brooklyn Museum in New York in the spring of 2012.


Jean-Michel Othoniel was born in 1964 in Saint-Etienne, France. He lives and works in Paris.


" My Way," (reference to the song by Frank Sinatra) is not a cover version of the classic. The song evokes instead a more solitary, individual path for me. A path which is mine in part, while also amidst various movements in contemporary art that I have passed through over the last 20 years. In addition, My Way is a title that can easily be understood in countries where the exhibition will be held, that might be called a ' mid-career retrospective.'

Le Bateau de larmes, Boat of Tears, 2004

Murano glass, metal, wood

@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Galerie Perrotin, Paris

Riviere blanche, White River, 2003
Murano glass, steel
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Le noeud de Lacan, Lacan's Knot, 2009
Mirrored glass, metal
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Amant suspendu, Suspended Lover, 1999
Murano glass
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Diary of Happiness, 2008
Murano glass, lacquered wood
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010, Galerie Perrotin

Les Mises a feu, 1989
Explosives fuses
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Le Petit Theatre de Peau d'Ane, Little Donkey-Skin Theatre, 2004
Ensemble composed of 4 dressing tables, glass, lacquered wood, embroideries, lace , fabric, silk
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010, Galerie Perrotin

Courtesy Centre Pompidou
My Way, March 2 - May 23, 2011
Galerie Perrotin

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In Praise of Doubt at Punta della Dogana

Sunday, April 10 was the opening of In Praise of Doubt, the latest contemporary art exhibition held at Punta della Dogana, a former Venetian customs house built in the 17th century and redesigned by architect Tadao Ando.
The exhibition In Praise of Doubt offers a thematic presentation exploring the strength and weakness of the human condition, based on a selection of works from the Francois Pinault Foundation Collection.


Drawing on emblematic works from the 1960s - and right up to the most contemporary  creations - the exhibition aims to pay homage to doubt in its most dynamic manifestations; through its strength in challenging prejudices, conventions and certainties.


The specific architectural nature of Punta della Dogana emphasizes this proposition. Each artist is presented in a dedicated area, and yet each is open to the others, as a result of the transparent features and passageways of the building.


The exhibition illustrates the passion and commitment of the collector, French billionaire fashion tycoon Francois Pinault, who has appointed Caroline Bourgeois as the curator of this show.


Of the 20 artists shown in the exhibition In Praise of Doubt, almost half have never been included in previous exhibitions of the François Pinault Collection. The artists include Adel Abdessemed, Marcel Broodthaers, Maurizio Cattelan, Subodh Gupta, David Hammons, Roni Horn, Thomas Houseago, Donald Judd, Edward Kienholz, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Julie Mehretu, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Shütte, Elaine Sturtevant, Tatiana
Trouvé and Chen Zhen. The exhibition will present newly commissioned works by Julie Mehretu and Tatiana Trouvé, specially created for the site.

Jeff  Koons
Hanging Heart (Red/Gold), 1994-2006

Donald Judd
Untitled

Adel Abdessemed
Practice Zero Tolerance, 2006, Sculpture, cast of a BMW, terracotta
Wall Drawing, 2006, Barbed wire

Bruce Nauman
3 Heads Fountain, 2005
Perfect Door, Perfect Odor, Perfect Rodo, 1972

Elaine Sturtevant
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, AMERICA AMERICA, 2004

Tatiana Trouve
Notes pour une construction, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan
All, 2008, 9 sculptures, white Carrara marble "P"

Julie Mehretu
Untitled, 2011, ink and acrylic on canvas

Courtesy Francois Pinault Foundation / Punta della Dogana, Venice
Palazzo Grassi

In Praise of Doubt, April 10, 2011 - December 31, 2012
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