I just heard about this Damien Hirst exhibition that opens 5-7pm tonight (Tuesday 19 July)
Titled The Dead and The Souls, these prints are on show from 20 July til 27 August
at Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland.
The two bodies of editioned work, The Dead (2009) and The Souls (2010)
envelop several of Hirst's well known concerns;
death and life, beauty and desire with a dynamism typical of Hirst's work.
The consecutive series are each made up of a few compositions
in various colour-ways and each print is in an edition of only fifteen.
InThe Souls butterflies symbolises both the beauty of life and its impermanence,
and metaphors for faith and death,
while the skull imagery in The Dead make overt reference to mortality.
Laid out like museum specimens and more or less anatomically correct
Hirst has beautified his subjects through the use of block foil printing.
Of The Souls Hirst has said "I love butterflies because when they are dead they look alive.
The foil block makes the butterflies have a feel similar to the actual butterflies
in the way that they reflect the light.
After The Dead I had to do the butterflies because you can't have one without the other". [Bracewell, M. (2010)]
As well as the two collections above will be showcasing several of Hirst's sculptural Spin Skull works,
three butterfly paintings and the impressive original, Beautiful Apollo Idealisation Painting.
Seldom seen in New Zealand, this is a great opportunity to see some of Damien Hirst's prints.
I look forward to going to see them myself!
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