Colourful spots, animals frozen in time, glorious butterfly wings and a skull set with diamonds are just some icons of Damien Hirst’s boundary-redefining career. Internationally recognised for his irreverent approach to artmaking, blurring the lines between media and expanding their possibilities, Hirst has helped set contemporary art on a practically limitless course. Through a decisive interplay of technology, technique and material, Hirst’s artworks engage with his signature themes of love, death, religion, science, belief and beauty to create works that are both visually and conceptually compelling.

Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, grew up in Leeds and moved to London in 1984. While studying at Goldsmiths School of Art from 1986-89, Hirst invented two fundamental series: his ongoing ‘Spot Paintings’, made up of meticulously rendered spheres of random colours arranged in perfect grid systems; and his ‘Medicine Cabinets’, an early investigation into science, medicine and systems of belief and trust that resurfaces across his oeuvre.  

In 1992, Hirst unveiled arguably his most iconic work ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (1991), a four-metre-long tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, and inserted his ‘Natural History’ series into the public consciousness. These sculptures simultaneously confront viewers with their own mortality and the unavoidable fate of death.

Hirst’s enduring confrontations with death emerge again in his butterfly works. Since his 1991 exhibition ‘In and Out of Love’, he has continued to readapt the butterfly motif. Hirst produces awe-inspiring compositions using their wings, as in his ‘Kaleidoscope’ series began in 2001, a formula that has entered a new chapter in the HENI prints series ‘The Aspects’ (H6, 2019), ‘The Elements’ (H6, 2020) and ‘The Empresses’ (H10, 2022). In these collections, the technology and materiality of the prints advance the symbolic resonance of the butterfly, standing for the possibility of beauty in death. 

Since 1994, Hirst has produced his joyful ‘Spin Paintings’. These works are made with minimal artist intervention, the final product reliant only on colour choice and force of movement. These paintings inspired ‘Enter the Infinite’ (H1, 2016), 12 jacquard-woven tapestries that constitute further delegation of the artistic process to a machine. ‘The joy of colour’ and colour relationships are themes to which Hirst frequently returns, as in ‘Colour Charts’ (2012), ‘Colour Space’ (2016), ‘Veil Paintings’ (2017) and their eponymous print series. 

In 2017, Hirst revealed ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’, which include hundreds of sculptures and drawings apparently salvaged from a shipwreck. This project foregrounded Hirst’s interest in belief systems, questioning structures that attract trust and value. Hirst’s 2021 project ‘The Currency’ further explores this idea, asking collectors to choose between the traditional medium of painting and the contemporary NFT, forcing them to put faith in where they see value. 

From 2018-20, Hirst produced ‘Cherry Blossoms’. The monumental canvases, entirely covered in dense, bright colours, envelop the viewer in a vast landscape of blooming trees that traverses the boundaries of figuration and abstraction. From these works, Hirst made his ‘Fruitful & Forever’ (H8, 2020) and ‘The Virtues’ (H9, 2021) print series, playfully presenting macro and micro details of the paintings that bring their tactile impasto to the fore. 

Hirst’s name is synonymous with contemporary art, continually pushing the boundaries of traditional approaches to and conceptions of the artwork. Hirst’s prints, editions and multiples are a fundamental part of this practice. Though wide-ranging in nature, together these works are magnificent exercises in how technique, technology and materiality can be manipulated to enhance the discourse and reception of Hirst’s subjects. 

Damien Hirst

Colourful spots, animals frozen in time, glorious butterfly wings and a skull set with diamonds are just some icons of Damien Hirst’s boundary-redefining career. Internationally recognised for his irreverent approach to artmaking, blurring the lines between media and expanding their possibilities, Hirst has helped set contemporary art on a practically limitless course. Through a decisive interplay of technology, technique and material, Hirst’s artworks engage with his signature themes of love, death, religion, science, belief and beauty to create works that are both visually and conceptually compelling.

Peter Doig’s visionary paintings and prints transform ordinary moments from life into enthralling compositions bursting with colour. His practice is in constant conversation with his itinerant lifestyle, resulting in images with suggestive narratives that are deeply embedded in the artist’s sense of place. Doig’s works are personal reflections on his life experiences and the world that surrounds him, drawing on memories and stories to construct relatable images. 

Born in 1959 in Edinburgh, Doig’s early life was nomadic, spent across Trinidad, Canada and Britain. In 1979 Doig began his studies at Wimbledon School of Art, moving on to Central St. Martins for his BA before receiving his MA in 1990 from Chelsea College of Art. Whilst at Chelsea, Doig created what would become some of his most famous paintings, including ‘Milky Way’ (1989-90) – a superb work exemplifying his reverence for nature. Doig's highly representational style, self-described as “filmic” and infused with a sense of solitude, stood in sharp contrast to the conceptual and minimalist art that consumed his peers in London at the time. 

After Chelsea, Doig’s output during the 1990s was exceptionally fruitful. His subject was often Canadian snowscapes, turning out generative works such as ‘Blotter’ (1993), ‘Ski Jacket’, (1994) and ‘Olin MK IV’ (1995-96). In 1991 he won the Whitechapel Young Artist Award, and in 1994 he was nominated for the Turner Prize. 

In 2000, Doig won an artist residency in Trinidad and returned to the island for the first time since childhood. During this period, he resumed painting his immediate surroundings, in works like ‘Grande Rivière’ (2001-02), which depicts a place on the island where Doig stayed, and ‘100 Years Ago (Carrara)’ (2001), which shows a person in a canoe with the prison island of Carrara, just off the coast of Port of Spain, in the background.

In 2002, Doig moved his family to Trinidad permanently, initiating a new phase in his career. Following his interests during his residency, he continued to draw upon his life and experiences on the island, as well as the history and sensibility of the country in his work. As is true across his practice, Doig used found images and photographs taken by himself as aids to produce his paintings, allowing him to capture specific details and convey certain atmospheres. 

Since his move to Trinidad, Doig has worked across the world, including in New York and London, to produce images that are dream-like in quality and construction, joining real and imagined elements. The results are often ordinary and everyday scenes, such as a man walking with an umbrella in ‘Lapeyrouse Wall’ (2004) or a cricket game in ‘Paragon’ (2006), as well as somewhat fantastical visions, like a lion roaming outside the prison in Port of Spain in ‘Lion (Fire Down Below)’ (2019) or the Christ-like skier in ‘Holy Mountain’ (2021). In 2018, Doig began a series of trips to Zermatt, Switzerland, reviving his interest in snowscapes and making paintings that not only capture moments from his time in the resort town, but also feelings, observations and atmospheres.

Doig continues to produce works which functions as the recordings of an acute observer. His thoughtful reflections on the everyday produce beautiful images that beg viewers to take a second look, and reconsider what we classify as mundane. 

Peter Doig

Peter Doig’s visionary paintings and prints transform ordinary moments from life into enthralling compositions bursting with colour. His practice is in constant conversation with his itinerant lifestyle, resulting in images with suggestive narratives that are deeply embedded in the artist’s sense of place. Doig’s works are personal reflections on his life experiences and the world that surrounds him, drawing on memories and stories to construct relatable images. 

Over the last five decades, architectural artist Brian Clarke has produced works that expand and redefine our understanding of stained glass. His practice is dedicated to liberating the medium both from its relegation to the side-lines of art history and the confines of architecture, bringing it into new contexts. He is the leading voice championing the expressive capacity of glass and is responsible for some of the most radical technological innovations in the modern era of stained glass production.

Born in 1953 into a working-class family in Oldham, UK, Clarke immersed himself in art from the age of 12, receiving a scholarship to the Oldham School of Arts and Crafts, and later to the North Devon College of Art and Design at 15. He received his first stained glass window commission for a residential home before he was 20, the start of dozens of projects that would take him around the world. A notable milestone was the 1978 exhibition, ‘GLASS/LIGHT’, co-curated with fellow stained glass artist John Piper and art historian Martin Harrison, the most extensive exhibition to date of stained glass of the 20th century.

By the 1980s, Clarke began receiving commissions for large scale public projects such as the Royal Mosque of King Khalid International Airport (1982), Stansted Airport in London (1988), the Neue Synagogue in Darmstadt (1988), Al Faisaliyah Centre in Riyadh (1997-2000) and Pfizer World Headquarters in New York (1997-2001). In creating these huge projects, Clarke drew from the surrounding architectures and cultures to create truly bespoke installations that became a defining part of the structure, rather than solely ornamental features.

Through these monumental commissions, Clarke has brought much-deserved attention to the visionary skill required to transform the highly sensitive material of glass into vibrant, expressive and modern artworks. In his smaller scale projects, Clarke adapts his practice to make equally powerful statements. Indeed, Clarke's series of freestanding stained glass screens produced with HENI are some of the clearest expressions of his commitment to challenging the traditional expectations of stained glass. Displayed in this way, the screens are awarded the full status of a single artwork, modified by their architectural surroundings but not dependent on it.

In his smaller scale works, Clarke’s original experimentation with the material can be intimately appreciated. For instance, in his ‘Summer Solstice Spitfires’ (2016) series of window panels, Clarke plays with degrees of opacity and transparency to regulate the brightness of the window, allowing only a few glimmering shadows of colourful light to be cast through it. Similarly, Clarke’s ‘Screens’ (begun in 2016) exhibit the vast range of techniques, forms and colour he has mastered, as well as his technological achievement of liberating the medium from the need for lead. As single pieces, they bring celebrations of light and colour into people’s homes.

With a mastery of glass and the ease with which he moves across scale and site, Clarke has produced a portfolio of radically diverse works. He continues to push the boundaries of stained glass as a medium, both in terms of technology and poetic potential, promoting a greater appreciation of the artform. Clarke’s art seems to possess a peculiar intellectual and visual depth, which affects viewers in unique ways, going beyond vision into the realm of the invisible.

Brian Clarke

Over the last five decades, architectural artist Brian Clarke has produced works that expand and redefine our understanding of stained glass. His practice is dedicated to liberating the medium both from its relegation to the side-lines of art history and the confines of architecture, bringing it into new contexts. He is the leading voice championing the expressive capacity of glass and is responsible for some of the most radical technological innovations in the modern era of stained glass production.

Gerhard Richter’s artistic explorations, which stretch over more than six decades, constitute a radical attempt to integrate representation and abstraction. Best known for his painted copies of black and white photographs rendered with a blurred effect, Richter has broadened the potentials of both photography and painting.

Born 1932 in Dresden, Germany, Richter’s childhood was affected by the rise of the Nazi regime and the traumatic events of World War II. According to some of his critics, these painful memories, combined with a regimented life in East Germany under Soviet rule, discouraged him from conveying ideological expressions through art. Such unpretentious perspective materialises in his continued focus on colour combinations and on the tangible quality of his canvases. 

Richter began his studies at the Dresden Art Academy in 1951, but disliked their dogmatic emphasis on Social Realist art. In 1961, Richter fled to West Germany where he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In this liberated, experimental environment, Richter first produced his photopaintings. 
Richter admits Pop Art gave him the license to use photography in his photopaintings. Like Warhol, he saw in photography’s mechanical recording a way to build a machine-like aesthetic that denied artistic involvement. Sourcing photographs from family albums, newspapers and magazines, Richter was interested in the photograph’s status as reproduction, as one stage removed from reality. The photopaintings function like echoes of distant worlds. This dissociation from the subject was developed in his signature blur, created by running a dry brush through the wet paint. In the photopaintings of his family, these distancing effects resonate a sense of confusion of how to make sense of their difficult history. 

Richter advanced this dissociative language in his printmaking practice. From his early editions, such as ‘Dogs’ (1965), to the 2017 Giclée print of ‘Tulips’ (1995) the artist employs the medium as an extra layer of aesthetic distance, being based off a painted image. At the same time, the print completes the work’s cycle, which started with a photographic image that was abstracted in paint and ended with the painted image returned to its photographic state.

Alongside his photopaintings, Richter has developed new possibilities for abstract art which build on his aesthetic of non-involvement. The first abstract series ‘Colour Charts’ (1966) was based on paint charts found in hardware stores and reproduce their geometric grids of colour. Later geometric abstractions used a random computer-generated selection to arrange colours by chance. One of his most intricate, ‘4096 colours’ (1974) would inform the design of Richter’s monumental stained glass windows for the south transept of the Cathedral of Cologne (2007). 

Unwilling to stick to one genre, in his ‘Works Behind Glass’ (2008-10) Richter embraced a free form abstraction. In these, poured enamel paint is squelched flat between glass sheets. Recreated as print editions, the Diasec-mounted chromogenic print on aluminium brilliantly captures the harsh flattening effects of the glass; indeed, the flattening becomes more extreme in the print as the layers of physical paint are less distinguishable.  The spectator is invited to abandon themselves to the Dionysian swirls of paint. 

The diversity of Richter’s oeuvre is remarkable, but equally extraordinary is the consistency of his vision. Throughout his work, he promotes an art that denies artistic involvement. Through this, Richter lays bare a natural beauty: from his tender and diffuse early photopaintings to the vibrant exaltation of colour in his glass paintings. 

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter’s artistic explorations, which stretch over more than six decades, constitute a radical attempt to integrate representation and abstraction. Known for his painted copies of black and white photographs rendered with a blurred effect, Richter has broadened the potentials of both photography and painting.  

Arthur Jafa is an American artist who works seamlessly across film, photography, happenings, moving image and sound installation, found material and prints. His work explores and questions the Black experience in American culture, encompassing its beauty, power and alienation.

Jafa was born in 1960 and grew up in a segregated Mississippi, recalling that he attended first grade at of the first schools to be integrated. From a young age, Jafa was interested in identity and self- expression. He has commented that he doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t feel aware of other people’s projections and perceptions, which inevitably influenced his own. Jafa moved to Washington D.C. to study film and architecture at Howard University where he first encountered the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s, leading him to begin thinking about how his work might fit into the history of Black aesthetics.

During the 1990s, Jafa worked in the film industry as Director of Photography and cinematographer on numerous internationally recognised movies, including Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’ (1991), Spike Lee’s ‘Crooklyn’ (1994) and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999). After a few years away from the arts, in the 2010s Jafa worked with musicians such as Solange, Beyoncé and Jay-Z in creating their music videos. His interest in dismantling monolithic representations of Blackness took on a new energy around this time, spurring on a wave of diverse artistic creation and fluidly moving across various media.

In 2016, Jafa displayed the hundreds of binders of images he had been collecting for decades at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, featuring material derived first from libraries and newsstands and then the internet, and content ranging from academic texts to comic books, high art to celebrity culture. Displayed on the walls of a gallery, the books became a visual lexicon of diasporic Blackness and a realistically thorough account of the diversity of Black being. In the same year, Jafa received international critical acclaim for ‘Love is the Message, the Message is Death’, a short film of found footage documenting both the suffering and beauty of Black experience, set against the music of Kanye West’s ‘Ultralight Beam’. 

The following year, the Serpentine Gallery in London worked with Jafa on the exhibition ‘A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions’. In this, Jafa presented a new series of assembled images, both found and original, alongside that of other Black artists, addressing the radical alienation of Black life in the West.

Jafa has explained that “one of the basic conundrums of Black being is that the very things that have oppressed us are the very things that define who we are and if we erase all the suppression and stuff, we sort of erase ourselves”. These themes of absence, haunting and melancholia are often paired alongside empowerment in Jafa’s work, often making for jarring viewing. Take ‘LA Haze I’ (T1) and ‘LA Haze II’ (T2) for example – absent of figures but bursting with meaning specific to the Black life in south LA.

Jafa’s confident fluency in working with images arises from his engagement with and meticulous archiving of visual content from a young age. The content of his assembled books derives from mass produced and widely distributed images, a theme that translates naturally into printmaking and intersects with the artist’s lifelong aspiration to identify the aesthetics of a relatable Black experience.

Arthur Jafa 

Arthur Jafa is an American artist who works seamlessly across film, photography, happenings, moving image and sound installation, found material and prints. His work explores and questions the Black experience in American culture, encompassing its beauty, power and alienation.

A meditation on the inherent dangers of the alpine landscape, ‘Lost’, the third print in Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022), uses Doig’s characteristic cartoonishly bright colours to disguise the horrific narrative behind the image. Facing out towards the viewer, hands raised and cupped around their eyes, a lone skier seems to stand in this snowy alpine landscape in search of help. The long, stretched shadow of the figure gives the impression of the fading day and of time running out. Despite being clad in bright orange, the helicopter rescue in the distant sky above appears not to see the skier, evoking the notion of screaming but not being heard. 

With its background narrative of disappearance, ‘Lost’ recalls Doig’s ‘Echo Lake’ (1998). Similarly based on stacked bands of colour overlaid with sparse detail, this earlier painting includes the common motifs of a lone figure and a search vehicle, while the title suggests a similar fruitlessness to the search so far. Indeed, the skier mimics the very stance of the figure in ‘Echo Lake’, who is shown with their hands raised to their eyes to hold binoculars, perhaps evoking Doig’s practice of repurposing figures and imagery across his work.  

The uneasy otherworldliness of ‘Lost’ plays against the poster format of the work, turning the idea of the tourist board advertisement on its head to subvert the usual narratives of beautiful scenery and a good time to be had by all. Now more a missing persons poster, translated from paint into print for the ‘Zermatt’ series, Doig’s image enters into a wider circulation, spreading the word about this lost figure and the dangers of the mountains.

Lost

A meditation on the inherent dangers of the alpine landscape, ‘Lost’, the third print in Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022), uses Doig’s characteristic cartoonishly bright colours to disguise the horrific narrative behind the image. Facing out towards the viewer, hands raised and cupped around their eyes, a lone skier seems to stand in this snowy alpine landscape in search of help. The long, stretched shadow of the figure gives the impression of the fading day and of time running out. Despite being clad in bright orange, the helicopter rescue in the distant sky above appears not to see the skier, evoking the notion of screaming but not being heard. 

The scene in ‘Road to Zermatt’, the fourth of six prints in Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022), conjures a non-specific memory of commuting to the ski slopes. In the foreground are two skiers, perhaps in conversation as they walk, set against a faint background which captures a house or resort on the left and a giant tree on the right. The banality of the scene is further emphasised by the woman pushing a pram. The improbably large white blots of thickly overlaid colour that cover the image stand for falling snow, clouding the view just as time and repetition can cloud memory.

‘Road to Zermatt’ sees Doig interpret the banal, everyday scenes that have long interested him into the ski and snowscape genre. The notion of commuting evokes works such as ‘Lapeyrouse Wall’ (2004), in which a lone flaneur figure is shown walking along a long, seemingly endless wall. The screen of snow that shroud’s the viewer’s vision in ‘Road to Zermatt’ can also be traced back to earlier works, such as ‘Cobourg 3 + 1’ (1994), another work that deals simultaneously with the effects of snow on the sight and its lasting effects on the memory. 

The poster format and print medium of the work in the ‘Zermatt’ series serves to elevate this fuzzy memory to an emblematic status, recalling the tourist board posters that advertise such ski resorts. With the possibility of reproduction and a wide circulation, viewers are invited to pin their own experiences and memories onto this image.   

Road to Zermatt

The scene in ‘Road to Zermatt’, the fourth of six prints in Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022), conjures a non-specific memory of commuting to the ski slopes. In the foreground are two skiers, perhaps in conversation as they walk, set against a faint background which captures a house or resort on the left and a giant tree on the right. The banality of the scene is further emphasised by the woman pushing a pram. The improbably large white blots of thickly overlaid colour that cover the image stand for falling snow, clouding the view just as time and repetition can cloud memory.

Rich layers of yellow, green and blue, accented by splashes of red and white, characterise Damien Hirst’s ‘Kew’, from his ‘Veils’ (H4) series. Published in 2020, the present work is a vibrant edition which captures sensuous details from Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ (2017). Recalling the artist’s iconic ‘Spot Paintings’ and ‘Visual Candy’ series, the ‘Veil Paintings’ embrace colour and artistic gesture on a large scale. The series is a continuation of Hirst’s investigation of colour relationships, intended to celebrate “colour and chaos in a big way”.  

‘Kew’ is named for the Royal Botanical Gardens located in London’s eponymous district, a choice that deliberately suggests abstracted botanical imagery as the subject of the print. The pure, rich colours layered thickly upon the canvas in strokes recollective of Pointillism mimic the lush colour of flowers in bloom, conveying a sense of vibrancy and life.  

Layers upon layers of thickly applied paint appear to recede away from the viewer, creating an image that is both an impenetrable surface and, seemingly, a window offering a glimpse into another world. ‘Kew’ captures this effect and enhances it further, the print medium effectively adding another layer of abstraction to Hirst’s veil.  

Rich layers of yellow, green and blue, accented by splashes of red and white, characterise Damien Hirst’s ‘Kew’, from his ‘Veils’ (H4) series. Published in 2020, the present work is a vibrant edition which captures sensuous details from Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ (2017). Recalling the artist’s iconic ‘Spot Paintings’ and ‘Visual Candy’ series, the ‘Veil Paintings’ embrace colour and artistic gesture on a large scale. The series is a continuation of Hirst’s investigation of colour relationships, intended to celebrate “colour and chaos in a big way”.  

Since his 2001 ‘Kaleidoscope Paintings’ series emerged, Damien Hirst has produced awe-inspiring works in which his butterfly motif is arranged into dreamy kaleidoscopic patterns, among the most entrancing being ‘Mercy’. Part of ‘The Aspects’ (H6, 2019) series, Hirst’s artwork portrays intricately placed images of butterfly wings, each in various shades of blue.  

‘Mercy’ joins a lineage of Hirst’s works inspired by Victorian tea trays decorated with intricate patterns of butterfly wings. In the present work, various sizes of single and paired butterfly wings are carefully arranged, apparently billowing out from the centre of the work in perfect symmetry. While these butterflies are not real, they have the power of convincing viewers of otherwise, their delicate details superbly captured.  

Named for one of the characteristics of God as detailed in the Old Testament, ‘Mercy’ builds on Hirst’s interest in the butterfly motif as spiritual symbol, having been used in Christian imagery to signify resurrection. The connection to Christian imagery and symbology is further strengthened in the stained glass-like effects of ‘’Mercy’. Not only do these wings recall carefully cut pieces of glass set into black lead cames, but they also appear illuminated, as if lit from behind. Fusing this religious symbolism with his perennial fascination with the butterfly’s ability to retain an exquisite beauty in death just as in life, here Hirst establishes the insect as an uplifting and radiant symbol of mortality.  

Mercy

Damien Hirst’s ‘The Aspects’ (H6) captures to a remarkable degree the sensation of looking through a kaleidoscope. Produced in collaboration with Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland in 2019, ‘The Aspects’ sees a reprisal of Hirst’s characteristic butterfly motif through a series of five unique prints in which the artist continues his search into the butterfly’s potentials as a spiritual and existential metaphor. 

Gerhard Richter’s life-long preoccupation with technology and alternative means of artmaking is embedded in ‘Waldhaus’ (P18, 2018), a facsimile print after the original oil on canvas from 2004. Richter’s painting began as a photograph of a house within a vast green forest which culminates in hilly peaks. 

This sublime image of a natural landscape was converted into a painting and altered through mechanical means. Richter projected the photograph onto his canvas, painstakingly tracing it with identical coloured pigments. However, Richter altered the image through his trademark blur reminiscent of an unfocused camera, effectively nodding to the image’s original medium. This effect is subtle, maintaining the integrity and readability of the original image while abstracting it in a way that captures the sensibility of the serene landscape. 

Richter returned to ‘Waldhaus’ with the present edition, a facsimile of tantamount quality which meticulously relays the captivating details of the painted original. Removed once more from the photographic original, ‘Waldhaus’ (P18) contributes a new dimension to this work. Embracing the potentials of technology, 'Waldhaus’ (P18) circles the image back to its true original state in yet another investigation into new methods of abstraction. 

Waldhaus

Gerhard Richter’s life-long preoccupation with technology and alternative means of artmaking is embedded in ‘Waldhaus’ (P18, 2018), a facsimile print after the original oil on canvas from 2004. Richter’s painting began as a photograph of a house within a vast green forest which culminates in hilly peaks. 


‘Cage 1’ (P19-1, 2020) is a Giclée print made after the first of Gerhard Richter’s monumental series of ‘Cage Paintings’ (2006). Originally, Richter intended for the canvases of his ‘Cage’ series to be painted after photographs of atomic structures, but unexpectedly initiated a practice of ‘unpainting’ when he became displeased with their current trajectory.

To this effect, Richter used a self-made squeegee to push and pull layers of paint across his canvases in horizontal and vertical bands, creating heavily textured artworks where bands of colour are intermittently disrupted and destroyed. The visual impact of these uniquely textured canvases was further enhanced by the artist’s use of a scraper to pick at the painted surface of his works. Each resulting multi-directional scratches and indentations, as well as the vivid tonal nuances, are perfectly preserved in the Giclée print.

‘Cage 1’, scaled down from its vast original dimensions to one square metre in the present edition, is one of the most colourful works in the series. The artwork image is dominated by an intense hue of lime green, with a wide bottle-green bar making its way across the top of the canvas. On the right-hand side of the work, a white bar runs vertically, interspersed with patches of green, grey, blue and red. 


Cage

‘Cage 1’ (P19-1, 2020) is a Giclée print made after the first of Gerhard Richter’s monumental series of ‘Cage Paintings’ (2006). Originally, Richter intended for the canvases of his ‘Cage’ series to be painted after photographs of atomic structures, but unexpectedly initiated a practice of ‘unpainting’ when he became displeased with their current trajectory.


Based on a selection of paintings produced during his time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022) series triumphantly marks the artist’s return to snowscapes for the first time since the 1990s.

The Zermatt Series

The Empresses is a series of prints constructed from images of red butterfly wings, intricately arranged with a filigree of red glitter to produce visually intoxicating, kaleidoscope-like effects. 

The Empresses

The Cage (P19) series consists of six prints representing each of Richter’s ‘Cage’ paintings, scaled down. In the ‘Cage’ paintings, Richter pushed and pulled layers of paint across the surfaces of his canvases in horizontal or vertical bands. 

Cage Prints

The Virtues is a set of eight cherry blossom prints. The prints are each titled after one of The Eight Virtues of Bushidō according to Nitobe Inazō.

The Virtues

These striking prints provide an extraordinary new perspective on The Currency collection, using extremely high-resolution images to focus in on singular details of the painted works.

The Currency Unique Prints

‘Rubikcubism’ is a series of four colour-filled prints after
Invader’s eponymous series of Rubik’s Cube-based sculptures.

Invader

RUBIKCUBISM

Based on a selection of paintings produced during his time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022) series triumphantly marks the artist’s return to snowscapes for the first time since the 1990s. Combining the real with the imagined, the ‘Zermatt’ works depict six filmic narratives based on Doig’s experiences within the idyllic Swiss resort time and constitute the artist’s first thematic series of works.

The ‘Zermatt’ paintings were conceived in 2018 when Doig’s friend, the architect, artist and skier Heinz Julen, offered his chalet in Zermatt for Doig to stay and paint snowscapes. The paintings that make up the six prints of this series were begun just shortly after Doig’s arrival at the chalet in 2018 and were worked on during subsequent trips to Zermatt before finally being completed in London in 2021 and 2022. 

Conceptually and compositionally, Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ series was influenced by a photograph he captured of a cat outside the chalet with the Matterhorn visible in the background. The image reminded him of ski posters designed to attract people into the mountains, characterised by a delicate balance of dynamic skier and majestic, snow-covered landscape. Simple yet enticing, these images prompted Doig to produce his own series of so-called painted posters. In doing so, ‘Zermatt’ joins a lineage of poster-making by Doig, perhaps most famously those made for his Studio Film Club in Trinidad.

Relying largely on memory to construct narratives based on his time in Zermatt, Doig’s images draw upon a range of inspirations – from the town’s strong religious tradition and the danger of its landscape to memories of skiing and commuting to the slopes. His view of the resort town was undeniably influenced by Derek Walcott’s descriptions of Zermatt in his generative series of poems, ‘The Prodigal’, from 2006.

Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ joins some of his most iconic paintings, such as ‘Ski Jacket’ (1994) and ‘Olin MK IV Part 2’ (1995-96), as his newest take on alpine landscapes populated by brightly dressed skiers. As is true of these earlier paintings, in ‘Zermatt’ Doig interrogates the impact of a snow-covered environment on one’s vision. For example, the strange nature of snow is captured in the white speckles that veil ‘Road to Zermatt’, a metaphor for the brokenness of memory, while the greenish hue of ‘Couloir 2’ recalls yellow-tinted ski goggles. 

In 2022 in collaboration with HENI Editions, the six ‘Zermatt; paintings deemed by Doig to be the most 'poster-like' in size and appearance were translated into facsimile Giclée prints on Cotton Smooth Rag and framed in oak with Optium Tru Vue Acrylic Glass. His choice to do so was in part inspired by his interest in the new printing technology and its capacity to maintain the integrity of an original painting in print form, disseminating his art to a wider audience along the way. Originally conceived as a series of painted posters on paper, in the printed format the ‘Zermatt’ paintings also take on a new dimension, bringing these images into the format that inspired them, to become so-called ‘art posters’, and making Doig’s dreamlike work more widely accessible. 

Zermatt

Based on a selection of paintings produced during his time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Peter Doig’s ‘Zermatt’ (D1, 2022) series triumphantly marks the artist’s return to snowscapes for the first time since the 1990s. Combining the real with the imagined, the ‘Zermatt’ works depict six filmic narratives based on Doig’s experiences within the idyllic Swiss resort time and constitute the artist’s first thematic series of works.

Veils

The Aspects

In 2021, Damien unveiled ‘The Virtues’ (H9), his second print series after his “garish and messy and fragile” ‘Cherry Blossoms’ (2018-20) paintings. The monumental canvases have been translated here into a vivid series of eight laminated Giclée prints on aluminium composite panels which captures the ephemeral, colourful blooms on sprawling tree branches.  

Ultimately about the spontaneous joy of spring, ‘Cherry Blossoms’ heralded Hirst’s self-professed “move away from Minimalism and the idea of the imaginary mechanical painter”. A series of 107 canvases of various sizes, ‘Cherry Blossoms’ is derived from the artist’s investigations into the relationships between abstraction and figuration. Returning to the ideas and aesthetics of the 19th century Pointillist painters Georges Seurat and Pierre Bonnard, the paintings are built up of “flashes” of a vast array of colours that work together to create a depth and vivacity to the visually predominant pinks and whites of the blossom trees. Working with the vast scale of the series, Hirst would fill his studio with canvases and work on a number of them simultaneously. In this way, image creation became symbiotic with the immersive viewing experience of them. Hirst works effectively beyond the limits of the visual field offered by one canvas just as the viewer is completely overwhelmed in front of the huge paintings.  

‘The Virtues’ further plays with the idea of the possibilities and limits of human perception. The images, derived from the painted ‘Cherry Blossoms’ canvases, show recognisable sections of the trees only seen partially as if through a window or from inside the tree itself. The focus is less on trees as a subject matter and more on the sheer beauty of the small moments of colour that make them. As Hirst said, “these prints are about the momentary, the insane transience of beauty – a tree in full crazy blossom against a clear blue sky. How can you argue with that?” 

Hirst’s fascination with the incredible ephemerality of the cherry blossom is echoed in the artwork titles, with each print named for The Eight Virtues of Bushidō according to Nitobe Inazō – Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honour, Loyalty and Control. Nitobe’s book, ‘Bushidō: The Soul of Japan’, narrates for Western audiences the Samurai code of ethics. Within the book, Nitobe also speaks on the cherry blossom, noting that it “carries no dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at the call of nature, whose colours are never gorgeous, and whose light fragrance never palls. Beauty of colour and of form is limited in its showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life.” 

In ‘The Virtues’ Hirst once more harnesses the possibilities of printmaking to experiment with technology, making his work available to new audiences along the way. Not only was its edition size open to public demand during a one-week application period, ‘The Virtues’ was the first print series for which both HENI Leviathan and Damien Hirst accepted payment in cryptocurrency. Reproduced in extraordinarily high resolution, in ‘The Virtues’ Hirst shrinks his monumental canvases into accessible prints, retaining the tactility of their captivatingly thick impasto and the vibrancy of their colours.  

In 2021, Damien unveiled ‘The Virtues’ (H9), his second print series after his “garish and messy and fragile” ‘Cherry Blossoms’ (2018-20) paintings. The monumental canvases have been translated here into a vivid series of eight laminated Giclée prints on aluminium composite panels which captures the ephemeral, colourful blooms on sprawling tree branches.  

'The Empresses' (H-10, 2022) marks a new iteration in Damien Hirst's exploration of the butterfly as a symbol for freedom, religion, life and death. A series of five laminated Giclée prints on aluminium composite, screen printed with glitter, each print depicts images of red and black butterfly wings, arranged into a unique kaleidoscope-like pattern. The carefully positioned wings appear mobile and their patterns transform, each print seeming to capture the butterflies in moments of variously directional flight. 

As well as a playful reference to Empress butterflies, the prints are named for five influential female rulers from history: Wu Zetian, Theodora, Nūr Jahān, Suiko and Taytu Betul. Their characters and stories are enhanced by the dominant red tone of the series, evoking life, war, power, anger, love, joy and luck. 

Since the beginning of his career Hirst has interacted with the butterfly, one of his best-known motifs. Inspired by a chance encounter in his studio and the intricate patterns found on Victorian tea trays, in 'The Empresses' Hirst develops on the complex compositions invented in his 'Kaleidoscope Paintings' series (begun in 2001). In 'The Empresses', Hirst builds on his interest in the insect's association with freedom, religion, life and death, linking butterflies to themes of glory, female power and the development of nations through the prints' namesake female rulers. 

'The Empresses' prints are symmetrical, asymmetrical and spiral patterns of meticulously organised butterflies that nonetheless exude hope and life – the butterflies look as if they are taking flight. This effect is in part aided by the material, laminated Giclée print on aluminium composite, which allows the butterfly wings to be rendered in minute detail, appearing lifelike and evoking an energetic quality with the light-reflecting property of their surfaces.

The awe-inspiring images of wings are framed by glitter, a vibrant and tactile material previously used by Hirst in his paintings and prints. This substance conveys a sense of joy, harking back to childhood play and moments of blissful abandon. In this way, the materiality of the prints work with the very images they depict to create the jocular sentiment that is characteristic of Hirst's work: the vivacity and excitement of the glitter ground lends a sense of life to the immobile butterfly wings, held static in their defined positions within the intricate geometry of each print. 

A limited edition series with sizes based on demand within a week-long application period, 'The Empresses' not only marked a new rendition of Hirst's iconic butterfly motif but also the arrival of the HENI Editions NFT Deed, permitting the delay of receipt of the prints for up to three years. This digital intervention afforded the ultimate flexibility to collectors of 'The Empresses' and introduced a chrysalis-like stage in the prints' lifecycles.  

‘The Empresses’ (H-10, 2022) marks a new iteration in Damien Hirst’s exploration of the butterfly as a symbol for freedom, religion, life and death. A series of five laminated Giclée prints on aluminium composite, screen printed with glitter, each print depicts images of red and black butterfly wings, arranged into a unique kaleidoscope-like pattern. The carefully positioned wings appear mobile and their patterns transform, each print seeming to capture the butterflies in moments of variously directional flight. 

Gerhard Richter’s series of six ‘Cage’ prints (P19, 2020) were based off his monumental ‘Cage Paintings’, created in 2006. For the Gagosian Gallery premiere in June 2021 they were accompanied by a recital featuring rock icon Patti Smith. “Everybody has a song which is no song at all”, said Smith. “It is a process of singing and when you sing you are where you are”. Her evocative words capture the essence of the exchange between the painting and print.

In both the paintings and the prints there is an active moment: it is the song in the process of being sung. It has its own quality and offers itself as a unique experience. If the original ‘Cage Paintings’ are monumental fields of colour, which cocoon and envelope the spectator, the small square print ‘Cage’ is intimate. Yet, the two are also profoundly linked as they both provide a visionary colour experience: in the case of the print and painting ‘Cage 6’ a texture of aqua greens, citrus yellows, black and Prussian blues.

Richter created the ‘Cage Paintings’ while listening to the experimental music of John Cage. His approach to the paintings and prints resonates central tenets of Cage’s practice, in particular the musician’s pursuit to eliminate the ego in his music. This ongoing concern, for Cage, reflected his deep interest in Buddhism and its non-dualistic philosophy that conceives the boundaries of the ego as an impediment in the experience of a unified consciousness. The notion of eliminating the artistic ego was already central to Richter’s aesthetic. In the ‘Cage Paintings’, he denied the handmade quality of traditional painting. Refusing to use a painter’s brush, which has associations of the personal touch, he fashioned his famous squeegee from a Perspex bar and a handle. This heavy apparatus allowed him to wipe paint across the canvas with a mechanical action that was almost slick. By adding further vertical or horizontal strips of colour, he eliminated the layer before it.  

Printmaking allows Richter to extend his practise and further develop his aesthetic of non-involvement since mechanically reproduced prints are further removed from the artist. In the case of ‘Cage’, the work is one stage further removed since the prints are based on photographs of the original painting. While this technique, with its effacement of individuality, reflects the idea of the ego as an impediment, Richter’s fields of shimmering colour could be equated to the spiritual concept of an elevated state of balance. 

In both its painted and printed form, ‘Cage’ is a series that incorporates dynamic bodily movement and an emotive contemplation of colour. In an attempt to create works that can truly exist autonomously, entirely removed from the artist’s ego, Richter has produced images of intense philosophical and sensorial weight. 

Gerhard Richter’s series of six ‘Cage’ prints (P19, 2020) were based off his monumental ‘Cage Paintings’, created in 2006. For the Gagosian Gallery premiere in June 2021 they were accompanied by a recital featuring rock icon Patti Smith. “Everybody has a song which is no song at all”, said Smith. “It is a process of singing and when you sing you are where you are”. Her evocative words capture the essence of the exchange between the painting and print.

The ‘Summer Solstice Spitfires’ (G1, 2016) editions continue Brian Clarke’s radical experimentation in stained glass. Clarke’s practice is driven by the aspiration of “transporting post-industrial godless man to the edge of ecstasy”, undermining the religious and architectural connotations that typically limit stained glass.

The spitfire form had appeared in Clarke’s work prior to this series, as a site-specific installation of dozens of stained glass windows at HENI Gallery in London, for example, and also in drawings and paintings. In 2016, Clarke collaborated with HENI again to create the “radical successors” to the window – a series of 70 editions of stained glass autonomous panels. 

Reproducing the recognisable spitfire motif in glass subverts the reality of the iconic wartime aircraft, one that would intercept the sun and cast ominous shadows on the earth below. Now the spitfire lets light pass through it to create rippling pools of colour that float, like the planes once did, over its surroundings. The regular repetition of the form across the frame further undermines its meaning, turning the sinister omen of death into a pattern. This manipulation of the symbol is further enhanced by its reproduction beyond the initial borders of the panel and across the individual editions.

Every work in the series features a different arrangement of coloured spitfire forms, and some were also painted in silver stain to further enrich the variation of colours. On the series, Clarke has commented, “I think that the most interesting of my ‘Spitfires’ works is the edition of stained glass panels. The process of firing has made the painting’s reproduction on each panel, its shade and tone, unique”. In addition to Clarke’s unique interventions across the series, the site specificity inherent to stained glass adds to this effect, offering each of the ‘Summer Solstice Spitfires’ editions a new and different spirit.

Consistent across the series is the arrangement of matte black clouds. Seeming to swell out from each boarder panel, the dark and oppressive clouds obstruct any light from passing through. This stands in dramatic contrast to the jubilance of the spitfires, which welcome the sun’s beams, translating them into a scattering of rainbow hues. Clarke’s holistic manipulation of light across the series of stained glass panels through his expert use of materials upends the meaning typically attached to the spitfire motif. Now when the aircraft comes into contact with the earth, it brings warmth and colour, rather than suffering and shadow.

The clouds were digitally printed in ceramic glazer and fired onto the glass. This blend of modern technology with centuries-old techniques, such as blown glass, adheres to Clarke’s decades-long career dedicated to working with stained glass. Nonetheless, after working with HENI in creating the dozens of individual stained glass panels, Clarke realised that “its secrets are still being teased out: step-by-step the medium reveals itself”.

Summer Solstice Spitfires

The ‘Summer Solstice Spitfires’ (G1, 2016) editions continue Brian Clarke’s radical experimentation in stained glass. Clarke’s practice is driven by the aspiration of “transporting post-industrial godless man to the edge of ecstasy”, undermining the religious and architectural connotations that typically limit stained glass.