Paris
Gagosian Gallery - Paris
8 Jun → 22 Sep 2021
From Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday.
Prototype for Lies from 1998 inaugurates one of Damien Hirst's major series, Pill Cabinets. It also opens this exhibition, presented simultaneously with the artist's first museum solo show at the Fondation Cartier. The Pill Cabinets are, in fact, an evolution of the Medicine Cabinets, whose shape imitates the shelves found in pharmacies. For the Pill Cabinets, Damien Hirst exhibits the pills stripped of all packaging, showing their simple shapes with rounded edges. Real pills, made of resin, metal or plaster, these installations confront art and science while evoking the work of their predecessors: Gerhard Richter's colour charts in their colourful arrangement, or Felix Gonzalez-Torres' sweets in their seriality. If drugs have always been part of Hirst's artistic vocabulary, this series takes on even more meaning in this pandemic period. Their symbolism, their power of conviction and the risks they present perfectly illustrate the dichotomy that the artist strives to illustrate. Individual well-being or lucrative market, these drugs full of promise bring this work closer to that of the post-minimalists, criticizing mass consumption.