DAMIEN HIRST
Archival inkjet print with silkscreen printed text and UV varnish on Hahnemühle Photo Luster 260gsm
42 × 29·7 cm
Edition #24 of 25
 
As well as being Britain’s most successful contemporary artist, Damien Hirst is a pioneering art curator and collector: now founder of the Newport Street Gallery. It was this insatiable energy as well as his iconic artistic and professional risk taking that ensured his place as the pioneer in the new generation of British artists who gained an international reputation during the 1990s.
Mortality, love, collecting, Wunderkammer and museums are major themes in Hirst’s work. His infamous series of animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved — often dissected — in formaldehyde. His spin paintings and his spot paintings have become iconic design symbols of the turn of the millennium. 
For the Portfolio Hirst has made an image echoing a seed packet or a tulip bulb sales brochure, showing a selection of exotic tulip varieties which highlight the obsessive relationship between Western and Eastern civilisations and the humble tulip, as well as his own iconic branding.