19 Damien Hirst Figures in a Landscape inscribed 'I love you' in lipstick on the mirror. glass, steel, silicone rubber, wardrobe, lamp, clothes, air fresheners and packaging, rubbish bags and lipstick overall 213.4 x 213.4 x 274.3 cm (84 x 84 x 107 7/8 in.) Executed in 1998.
Provenance White Cube, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Video Damien Hirst Identity in a Box 'Figures in a Landscape' is one of Hirst's most ambitious vitrine pieces, sitting contextually alongside his historical formaldehyde pieces of the early 1990s. The work explores conceptions of identity and success, both real and imagined. Catalogue Essay Presenting some of the most significant themes within his oeuvre, the present work engages us with the death of love in an age of plastic and cosmetic superficiality. Figures in a Landscape is a seminal example of Damien Hirst’s rare series of Vitrine works. This series sits alongside his Formaldehyde works and Pill Cabinets as the most intellectually rigorous and visually powerful iterations of Hirst's unique creative enterprise, encapsulating the provocative aesthetic and satirical tone that defined the British Avant-Garde in the 1990s. Perishing within their fragile polythene skins, Damien Hirst’s spurious rubbish bag ‘figures’ slump against the incarcerating steel and glass ‘landscape’, as if impassively being propped up by the very anxieties that divide and imprison them. The implied odour of the atrophic mess is masked by the artificial scent of cheap air fresheners that have been carelessly scattered over the incumbent figures, ruthlessly lampooning the narcissistic pursuits of contemporary culture by emulating our proclivity for simulated beauty that manifests itself through our use of cosmetics, social media, designer perfumes, etc. Hirst is wryly satirising a society entrapped by a dissonance between the ideals of beauty, the inadequacies of self-image, and our gradual demise as time passes. Yet, he also presents us with a society yearning for something that exceeds its natural means, of which one can both sympathise with and pity. Along the periphery of the divisive steel cage, two old pieces of furniture stand in sharp contrast to the amorphous forms below, rising above the squalid chaos like lingering figments of dignity in a world defined by languish. The single phrase 'I Love You' is scrawled in lipstick across the mirror like a lover’s affectionate message which implies intimacy, despite the pervading squalor. This phrase is important. It links the work to the emotionally charged neon slogans of the equally provocative Young British Artist, Tracey Emin and the pseudo-post-punk pop culture of the 1990s that empowered female expression and sexuality. However, it also associates the work with another Vitrine Hirst made the same year titled Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist, in which a half finished canvas sits alongside a mirror containing the same phrase. This is a message the artist wrote to himself. It brings about a more direct analysis, one in which the phrase takes on the maniacal characteristics of a person in emotional decline. Under this reading the words lack their natural sincerity and become disconcerting, exposing a sense of anguish that requires abating, whereby a message of self-love becomes indistinguishable from a feeling of self-loathing. This is a brave and unabashedly confrontational work that continues down a path already laid by some of the most important artists of the twentieth century. The black, contorted sacks positioned within isolating formal structures evoke Francis Bacon’s tortured figures trapped within the tense dimensions of their own thoughts. The use of industrial materials and found objects – sacks, steel – recall the Arte Povera constructions of Jannis Kounellis Here, beauty becomes manifest in unconventional ways. The raw power of the structures carries its message with a haunting yet quotidian grace, ultimately establishing a causal relationship between self-image and provocation. Read More Artist Bio Damien Hirst British • 1965 There is no other contemporary artist as maverick to the art market as Damien Hirst Foremost among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of provocative artists who gradua
19 Damien Hirst Figures in a Landscape inscribed 'I love you' in lipstick on the mirror. glass, steel, silicone rubber, wardrobe, lamp, clothes, air fresheners and packaging, rubbish bags and lipstick overall 213.4 x 213.4 x 274.3 cm (84 x 84 x 107 7/8 in.) Executed in 1998.
Provenance White Cube, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Video Damien Hirst Identity in a Box 'Figures in a Landscape' is one of Hirst's most ambitious vitrine pieces, sitting contextually alongside his historical formaldehyde pieces of the early 1990s. The work explores conceptions of identity and success, both real and imagined. Catalogue Essay Presenting some of the most significant themes within his oeuvre, the present work engages us with the death of love in an age of plastic and cosmetic superficiality. Figures in a Landscape is a seminal example of Damien Hirst’s rare series of Vitrine works. This series sits alongside his Formaldehyde works and Pill Cabinets as the most intellectually rigorous and visually powerful iterations of Hirst's unique creative enterprise, encapsulating the provocative aesthetic and satirical tone that defined the British Avant-Garde in the 1990s. Perishing within their fragile polythene skins, Damien Hirst’s spurious rubbish bag ‘figures’ slump against the incarcerating steel and glass ‘landscape’, as if impassively being propped up by the very anxieties that divide and imprison them. The implied odour of the atrophic mess is masked by the artificial scent of cheap air fresheners that have been carelessly scattered over the incumbent figures, ruthlessly lampooning the narcissistic pursuits of contemporary culture by emulating our proclivity for simulated beauty that manifests itself through our use of cosmetics, social media, designer perfumes, etc. Hirst is wryly satirising a society entrapped by a dissonance between the ideals of beauty, the inadequacies of self-image, and our gradual demise as time passes. Yet, he also presents us with a society yearning for something that exceeds its natural means, of which one can both sympathise with and pity. Along the periphery of the divisive steel cage, two old pieces of furniture stand in sharp contrast to the amorphous forms below, rising above the squalid chaos like lingering figments of dignity in a world defined by languish. The single phrase 'I Love You' is scrawled in lipstick across the mirror like a lover’s affectionate message which implies intimacy, despite the pervading squalor. This phrase is important. It links the work to the emotionally charged neon slogans of the equally provocative Young British Artist, Tracey Emin and the pseudo-post-punk pop culture of the 1990s that empowered female expression and sexuality. However, it also associates the work with another Vitrine Hirst made the same year titled Contemplating a Self Portrait as a Pharmacist, in which a half finished canvas sits alongside a mirror containing the same phrase. This is a message the artist wrote to himself. It brings about a more direct analysis, one in which the phrase takes on the maniacal characteristics of a person in emotional decline. Under this reading the words lack their natural sincerity and become disconcerting, exposing a sense of anguish that requires abating, whereby a message of self-love becomes indistinguishable from a feeling of self-loathing. This is a brave and unabashedly confrontational work that continues down a path already laid by some of the most important artists of the twentieth century. The black, contorted sacks positioned within isolating formal structures evoke Francis Bacon’s tortured figures trapped within the tense dimensions of their own thoughts. The use of industrial materials and found objects – sacks, steel – recall the Arte Povera constructions of Jannis Kounellis Here, beauty becomes manifest in unconventional ways. The raw power of the structures carries its message with a haunting yet quotidian grace, ultimately establishing a causal relationship between self-image and provocation. Read More Artist Bio Damien Hirst British • 1965 There is no other contemporary artist as maverick to the art market as Damien Hirst Foremost among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of provocative artists who gradua
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