Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s visually entrancing facsimile print ‘Gritti’ is speckled with extraordinarily playful spots. This print from Hirst’s ‘Colour Space’ (H5, 2018) is based on an original work from his eponymous painting series from 2016. Borrowing the logic of uniquely coloured spots from his ‘Spot Paintings’ (begun in 1986), in ‘Colour Space’ gone are the iconic grids, replaced by a randomness of movement, colour and even splattering paint to enliven the once strictly arranged spots.  

Against a white background, vibrant hues of red, orange, green, blue, purple, yellow and pink spots are congested, touching and overlapping to cover the near entirety of the present picture plane. The occasional splatter adds an additional air of vitality, emphasising the dynamic nature of the work. Together the spots play tricks on the eyes, appearing almost like pixelations as their colours unintentionally assemble into captivating swirling and circular patterns. 

The spots in ‘Gritti’, named for the palace hotel in Venice, appear to float in space and total to seemingly infinite numbers as they push past the picture plane, effectively establishing connections to atoms under a microscope. Reverberating with energy, these dynamic particles construct a work that seems suspended in a constant state of transformation.  

Gritti

Colour Space

Infused with the child-like joy reminiscent of his ‘Spin Paintings’ series, begun in 1994, Damien Hirst’s 2016 ‘Colour Space’ paintings rid themselves of the rigid structure of his ‘Spot Paintings’ (begun in 1986), constituting a new phase in Hirst’s endless endeavour to “[pin] down the joy of colour”. In 2018 in collaboration with HENI Editions, Hirst translated the logic of these 261 paintings into the eponymous ‘Colour Space’ (H5) series of eight spot prints which reverberate with seemingly boundless energy.  