Other Criteria – förlag

On the early work of Britain’s most successful living artist, from his formative years at Goldsmiths to his pioneering conceptual pieces among the Young British ArtistsThe stellar ascent of Damien Hirst (born 1965) began with his enrollment at Goldsmiths College in 1986, where he quickly became one of the standout artists of his class. This retrospective focuses on the early years of Hirst’s trailblazing career, featuring his university work, his first Spot Painting and his experiments with collage.Additionally, this volume highlights his most iconic projects, such as the staggering 1999 painted bronze sculpture Hymn and his now-infamous series of conceptual works in which taxidermied animals are suspended in vitrines of formaldehyde. A selection of quotes accompanies the illustrations and reveals the themes which have remained constant throughout the artist’s career: beauty, religion, science, life and death.

Joo is a substantial monograph on the work of American/Korean artist Michael Joo surveying all his finished projects, as well as some preliminary work, since his graduation in 1991. Joo describes his art as "a complex network of non-hierarchic information" with several layers of meaning that trigger multiple associations, and the book includes his extended captions alongside each project. Michael Joo works in a wide range of media, including sculpture, installation, animation and performance-based video art. His work frequently investigates themes centring around questions of identity, juxtaposing Eastern spiritualism with the Western way of understanding the world. Fascinated by the interaction between nature and its surroundings, Joo also has a profound interest in scientific processes. Thematically, his projects explore dualities such as linear and cyclical, physical and metaphysical, real and unreal, natural and unnatural, often using a visual language which combines highly complex geometric and structural patterns with 'real' objects – bodily fluids, eggs and mosquitoes – from nature.

Other Criteria presents the book produced for Damien Hirst's first show in Mexico, 'The Death of God – Towards a Better Understanding of a Life Without God Aboard the Ship of Fools'. Containing 69 full colour reproductions of all the works in the show, the catalogue also includes an interview with the gallery owner, Hilario Galguera, on the nature of Hirst's current work and its exploration of religion as a continuing theme. Hirst's earlier poems, The Cancer Chronicles, are reproduced within the catalogue alongside light micrographs of nineteen different kinds of cancer cells. With three-colour foil blocked cover and real metallic gold printed throughout, the catalogue also contains a fold- out detail of the work 'In the Name of the Father'. All text appears in both English and Spanish and there are two covers available – a Spanish and an English version – with identical interiors. This book is a must have for everyone interested in Hirst's work.

Requiem II details all the previously unseen skull paintings from the Requiem exhibition at the Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine, in April 2009. Featuring over 40 works painted between 2006 and 2008, Hirst uses paint to convey the darker, philosophical attributes of death. Emerging from the midnight darkness, his Requiem skull paintings speak of a remembrance of corporeality and the transportation from body into soul. Using the skull as representative of this transition, Hirst appeals to our universal nature, his art merging sublime romanticism with life's cold scientific reality: together we drive towards death.

Requiem I catalogues each of Hirst's works exhibited at the Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine, in April 2009: over 90 in total. Featuring iconic early pieces from the 1990s through to the new, previously unseen skull paintings, the book is testament to the vast range of Hirst's output. Michael Bracewell's extensive essay examines the conceptual and technical developments in the artist's career within the wider context of his cultural influence.

Requiem II details all the previously unseen skull paintings from the Requiem exhibition at the Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine, in April 2009. Featuring over 40 works painted between 2006 and 2008, Hirst uses paint to convey the darker, philosophical attributes of death. Emerging from the midnight darkness, his Requiem skull paintings speak of a remembrance of corporeality and the transportation from body into soul. Using the skull as representative of this transition, Hirst appeals to our universal nature, his art merging sublime romanticism with life's cold scientific reality: together we drive towards death.

Published on the occasion of Damien Hirst's exhibition at the Wallace Collection, London in October 2009, this catalogue prints a selection of blue skull and flower paintings from the show, with a total of 30 illustrations and 3 gatefolds.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Dark Trees, at Hilario Galguera, April 2010, this catalogue features a number of previously unseen Blue Paintings from Hirst's 2006-2008 series. Marking his second ever show in Mexico, his oil painted skulls find symmetry in Mexico's Day of the Dead'celebrations, from which the artist has drawn a great many influences. Included in the publication are "Human Skull in Space," "Man Barely Alive" and a number of gate-folded triptychs: "Three Views of a Skull," "Towards The End of The Day" and "Bad Omen."

Published on the occasion of Damien Hirst's exhibition at L&M Gallery, New York, October 2010, the first ever medicine cabinets book is contextualised by the artist's following of the punk movement. The first twelve sculptures in the book are named after the title tracks on the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks album. The front page newspaper spreads punctuating the book from the album's release year (1977) and the year of the cabinets' completion (1989) provide a context for reading James Frey's story poem, Fuck This and Fuck That, which describes the listless protest of a teenage waster. The song titles and cabinet names - No Feelings, Liar and Seventeen - resound with the frustrations of Thatcherite Britain and the violence borne out in daily uprest and anarchy, as depicted in the news: IRA MEN HELD IN BIG SWOOP; RIOT SHIELDS OUT AGAIN and DOCKS JOBS-FOR-LIFE TO BE AXED BY AUTUMN. Hirst's medicine cabinets have long been described as temples of medicinal hierarchies providing nothing more than a short-term cure in the face of death. Viewing the pervasive successes and exploitations of the pharmaceutical industry as a belief system in itself is evidence of our dependency and a form of escapism. Hirst has commented: 'I've always seen medicine cabinets as bodies, but also like a cityscape or civilization, with some sort of hierarchy within it. It's also like a contemporary museum of the Middle Ages. In a hundred years' time this will look like an old apothecary. A museum of something that's around today.'The publication features a radio broadcast interview between Damien Hirst and Steve Jones, the Sex Pistols' guitarist, covering music, girls, money, drugs, drinks and smokes. Thebook's index lists every medicine cabinet ever made and the exhibition itself will include original Sex Pistols memorabilia including album sleeves and t-shirts.

Hirst began his collection in the late 1980s by exchanging his own works with those of his contemporaries and artist friends. It has grown to include works by many international artists of earlier generations: not only postwar masters like Bacon and Giacometti, but also pivotal figures in the history of twentieth-century art, such as Richard Hamilton, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince and Kurt Schwitters. Two themes recur frequently in this selection--memento mori and the animal kingdom--and together they are capable of communicating the spirit of the entire collection, combining masterpieces of contemporary art with fascinating specimens from the natural world. An independent curator, author and art advisor, Geuna has contributed a perceptive essay on the scope and nature of this collection as well as a penetrating interview with Damien Hirst. Another essay by Mario Codognato (writer, and curator at Blain|Southern) explores Hirst's dual role as artist/collector, and analyses his considerable influence, both on his contemporaries and on younger artists whose work is still developing. Accompanying stunning colour plates of all the works in the exhibition, there are also brief biographies of the artists involved.

This publication accompanies the Damien Hirst 'Two Weeks One Summer' exhibition at White Cube Gallery, May 2012. Painting has always been an important part of Hirst's oeuvre, but unlike the spot paintings and photorealist series which were made using a collaborative studio process, this body of work is altogether more personal: painted from life, by Hirst in his Devon studio.The paintings, often intimate in size, could be seen as traditional still lifes, depicting an array of carefully arranged elements, both natural and inanimate, sometimes memento mori, alongside objects and formal devices that have made their appearance in Hirst's sculptures and installations before. Exquisitely coloured birds on display stands or in simple glass boxes, butterflies, fruit and cherry blossom at the peak of its beauty, intimate the pure joy of spring's transition into summer but also the temporal significance of this natural phenomenon.Next to these bucolic objects, more sinister symbols take their place: oversized scissors, a shark's gaping jawbone, bell jars and even several lonely single or conjoined foetuses floating in jars, elements that are displaced from the laboratory table rather than the domestic one. Some objects are painted with clarity and impasto; others appear hazy and faint, as if they are somehow more insubstantial, part of a sudden apparition or dream-like vision.

Published on the occasion of Damien Hirst's exhibition at White Cube in Hong Kong in the spring of 2013. Among many new works illustrated in the publication are pieces from some of Hirst's latest series: the Entomology paintings and the Blade paintings. Hirst began work on the Entomology paintings in 2009. Each piece is made by placing hundreds of varieties of insect and beetle species into household gloss paint, in intricate geometric patterns. The series is reminiscent of Hirst's iconic series of butterfly wing Kaleidoscope pieces, dating from 2001, which were originally inspired by Victorian tea trays. As with the butterfly--one of Hirst's most enduring "universal triggers"--the insects' appeal derives largely from the appearance of life they retain in death. However, whilst the iridescent beauty of the wings in the Kaleidoscope series evoke stained glass windows, and are often assigned spiritual titles, the Entomology paintings are named after phases and characters in Dante Alighieri's tortuous vision of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy. The works also allude to Hirst's longterm interest in the nineteenth-century fascination with natural history and the irony involved in having to kill something in order to look at it. The Blade paintings are amongst the newest series of works in Hirst's practice. Thousands of variously shaped scalpel blades are positioned on a canvas in spectacular, mandala-like patterns. In some of the works, intermittent areas of coloured gloss paint have been layered in between the blades. The Blade paintings reference two of Hirst's seminal earlier series. While their geometric patterns recall the earlier series of butterfly Kaleidoscope paintings, in their use of surgical instruments, Hirst also returns to one of his most recognisable themes: medicine, and its inevitable futility in the face of our mortality. The surgical materials, first used by Hirst in his early 90s instrument cabinets, are described by the artist as "phenomenal objects because they have to have this confidence and this belief. They are the best quality. They are brilliantly designed, for all the right reasons." With the Blade paintings, the instruments eventual inability to arrest decay is highlighted by their relegation to decorative status.

The Visual Candy paintings were made between 1992 and 1994.The works showcase the ways in which Damien Hirst used the signifier of candy during the early 1990's, exploring questions of pure aesthetics. Hirst says they were created as a direct riposte to an art critic who had dismissed Hirst's Spot Paintings as "just visual candy.' Addressing the viewer on a deliberately emotionaland instinctive level, these works, abetted by their exuberant titles, among them Some Fun (1993) and Dippy Dappy Dabby (1993), set out to question the implication that aesthetically pleasing art is inherently insignificant.While ostensibly abstract, the paintings in fact depict medicinal pills, and can be seen as a stylised depiction of the psychological effects of happy, mood-enhancing drugs. Hirst once described how, "in every painting there is a subliminal sense of unease… the colours project so much joy it's hard to feel it, but it's there. The horror underlying everything," In this context, the Visual Candy paintings, despite their surface optimism, posses a disquieting undercurrent of tension and darkness - born from an awareness of the inevitable low that follows any high. Hirst once said that "art is about life - there isn't anything else.'

Relics constitutes the new and largestever retrospective of Damien Hirst's work, including both iconic, and previously unseen artworks, spanning 27 years of the artistscareer. If you own one book on the work of this artist, this is the latest and most comprehensive. For the first time Hirst's two diamond skulls, "For the Love of God" (2007) and "For Heaven's Sake" (2008), are pictured together. Explaining, "art's about life and it can't really be about anything else … there isn't anything else," Hirst's work investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, anddissects the tensions and uncertainties at the heart of human experience.

Hirst’s Psalm paintings allude to Gothic stained glass windows and the circular patterns of Buddhist mandalasThis beautifully illustrated book constitutes a comprehensive survey of Damien Hirst's Psalm paintings. The 150 works in the series are made up of iridescent butterfly wings and paint on canvas, which combine to form kaleidoscopic patterns reminiscent of Gothic stained glass windows. Dating from 2008, the paintings address some of Hirst's most enduring and important themes: beauty, art, belief, life and death. Each of the fully illustrated paintings is accompanied by the Old Testament prayer from which its title is derived, the text rendered on images of individually selected marble samples. Also included is a complete list of works, and essays by art writers Michael Bracewell and Amie Corry. In his essay, Bracewell writes: "The Psalm paintings can't help but bring together, in literal form, such fundamental concepts as beauty, and power over death through prayer and belief, while simultaneously seeming to propose solely their own—albeit spectacular—abstraction. As they take their place within the greater canon of Hirst's art, these paintings extend his fascination with natural history and the potentially synonymous relationships between life, death, art and 'beauty,' and the language of Christian faith and religion." The Complete Psalm Paintings is an exquisite companion to one of Hirst's most beautiful series.Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived and curated Freeze, an exhibition of his own work and that of his contemporaries staged in an abandoned London warehouse. Since then Hirst has become widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Alongside over 80 solo exhibitions, he has worked on numerous curatorial projects. In 2008, Hirst took the unprecedented step of bypassing gallery involvement by selling 244 new works at a Sotheby's, London auction. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995 and received a major solo retrospective at Tate Modern, London. He lives in Devon, England.

This artist's book is a mixture of recipes and ideas embellished with illustrations and photographs. The recipes are by British artist Sue Webster (born 1966), better known as one half of an artist duo with Tim Noble; the illustrations are by both artists. The recipes came as a result of the artists' move to Folly Acres in the British countryside—an organic farm complete with vegetable garden, chickens and wild woodland. Webster had never cooked before but felt compelled to try her hand. "As I executed each idea I would … record each dish on my iPhone. Sometimes I got bored of the edible dish and would photograph the garbage in the bin … sometimes I would also sketch them out—so the book is a combination of recipes and ideas typed on an old German typewriter (until it finally exploded), drawings and crazy photographs."

"Breakfast at The Wolseley gave Damien and I the perfect opportunity to discuss the business of the day," remembers Frank Dunphy, Damien Hirst's business manager, "the bow-tied super-ego to Mr. Hirst's id," as The Wall Street Journal has described him. "Always on time, Damien would first hold out his hand for a pen or pencil and would then begin sketching on the back of his placemat." Portraits of Frankis published to coincide with Dunphy's retirement after almost 15 years with the artist. Seen here for the first time, Hirst's portraits were sketched during the pair's regular breakfast meetings at the famous Wolseley restaurant in London between 2004 and 2010. They provide a touching illustration of Frank and Damien's collaborative relationship as it unfolded over the course of some of the most extraordinary years of the artist's career.

In 2014, Damien Hirst (born 1965) unveiled a new series of "paintings" composed of vast numbers of surgical instruments, which combine to form bird's-eye views of cities from around the world. With these Black Scalpel Cityscapes, Hirst investigates subjects pertaining to the sometimes disquieting realities of modern life--surveillance, urbanization, globalization and the virtual nature of conflict--as well as those relating to the human condition in general, such as our inability to arrest physical decay. Buildings, rivers and roads are rendered as scalpels, razor blades, hooks and safety pins. Described by the artist as "portraits of living cities," the full series is illustrated in this volume and accompanied by detail illustrations. Also included is an essay by Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps, and a short story by novelist and arts writer Michael Bracewell.

This book highlights the connection between Damien Hirst (born 1965) and the British modernist artist Margaret Mellis (1914–2009), who became a close friend and mentor to the YBA protagonist during the development of his early career. In the 1980s Hirst made regular visits to Mellis' home and studio in Southwold, on the North Sea coast of England, where he spent much time studying her beautiful drawings of "half-dead flowers" on envelopes and driftwood assemblages fashioned from her beachcombing forays. In 2001 Hirst expressed the view that she had been unjustly neglected and deserved to be "up there—large on the map with her contemporaries"; their works were first exhibited side by side at the Tate in 2008. Alongside reproductions of assemblages and drawings by Mellis and Hirst, this volume includes a reproduction of a letter written to Hirst by Mellis from c. 1987, and an essay on Mellis by Hirst.

Simplified renderings of the iconic British artist's works: a coloring book for all agesDamien Hirst: Colouring Book features the British artist’s most iconic works rendered as simple line drawings. Coloring fans of all ages can immerse themselves in themes and motifs found within some of the artist’s most enduring series, including anatomical models, butterflies, medicine cabinets, spin paintings, color charts and kaleidoscope paintings. Featuring Hirst’s most popular images, including "The Incomplete Truth," "Myth," "Loving in a World of Desire," "Hymn," "For the Love of God," "Benevolence" and more, the volume brings some of the most controversial and groundbreaking work of contemporary art to a witty coloring-book format.

British artist Gavin Turk (born 1967) has been at the forefront of contemporary sculpture since the late ‘80s, with his painted bronzes, waxworks, recyclings of art-historical icons and imaginative use of trash. Throughout his career, Turk’s sculptures have dealt with issues of authorship, authenticity and identity, working to demystify or parody the myth of the artist. This fully illustrated catalog is published for Turk’s show at Damien Hirst’s new London exhibition space, Newport Street Gallery.The volume spans the duration of the artist’s career to date, featuring his most important pieces from his seminal blue-plaque work, “Cave,” through his many signature-based artworks, egg sculptures and waxworks, to his more recent bronze casts of sleeping bags and trash bags. Featuring three gatefolds, it also includes essays by psychoanalyst and author Darian Leader and Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, plus a conversation with Hirst.

Based on the minimal aesthetic of the medicinal pill, the Schizophrenogenesis series by Damien Hirst (born 1965) examines our almost spiritual faith in the rigors of science and the pharmaceutical industry. This volume includes all of the works from the series, including The Cure: 30 silkscreen prints, each depicting a two-color pill set against a vibrantly hued background. Also included in this volume are the corresponding sculptural works, reproductions of medicine bottles, pharmaceutical boxes, ampoules and syringes at various monstrous scales. These works continue Hirst’s exploration of contemporary belief systems, which now rank medicine alongside religion, love and art. Hirst explains: “Pills are a brilliant little form, better than any Minimalist art. They’re all designed to make you buy them … they come out of flowers, plants, things from the ground, and they make you feel good, you know, to just have a pill, to feel beauty.”

Bali-based artist Ashley Bickerton (born 1959) rose to prominence in the early 1980s as part of New York’s East Village art scene with his vibrant abstract works critiquing consumer culture and the commodification of the art object.Alongside Jeff Koons, Meyer Vaisman and Peter Halley, Bickerton pioneered what was called the “Neo-Geo” movement with his unconventional paintings devoid of Expressionist brushstrokes. Featuring works that span the duration of Bickerton’s career thus far, from the earlier consumerist works up to the recent tropically colored mixed-media paintings of exotic, erotic fantasies and nightmares, Ashley Bickerton: Ornamental Hysteria draws from works in Damien Hirst’s Murderme collection. This fully illustrated book offers a thorough survey of the artist’s diverse body of work and includes essays by novelist Paul Theroux and art critic Nicola Trezzi, as well as a conversation between Bickerton and the filmmaker Roddy Bogawa.

Simulation/Skin is published to accompany the 2017 Newport Street Gallery exhibition Selected Works from the Murderme Collection. It features illustrations of 31 works by 28 artists from Damien Hirst’s personal collection, selected by Hirst himself.

American artist Dan Colen (1979) emerged onto the New York art scene in the early 2000s alongside artists such as Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Drawing on graffiti and vernacular culture as artistic influences in his paintings and installations, and living legendarily hard, Colen was described by The Guardian as the "bad boy of post-pop New York." Brilliantly witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, Colen's art presents a portrait of contemporary America and is, in part, an investigation into the act of producing and looking at art.Dan Colen: Sweet Liberty, published to accompany Colen's solo exhibition at Newport Street Gallery in London, spans 15 years of the artist's career, including new works, and includes large-scale installation images of the exhibition. The book features a foreword by Damien Hirst and an essay by curator Annie Godfrey Larmon.

This exquisite hardback volume, boasting a ribbed leather spine, presents the second collection of a series of drawings on paper by Damien Hirst (born 1965), rendered in a range of mediums including silverpoint, charcoal and ink. The drawings form part of Hirst's most ambitious project to date, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, presented at the Pinault collection's two Venetian museums—the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana—from April to December 2017. The exhibition marked the first time in the Collection's history that both museums had been dedicated to the work of a single artist.

This catalog for British painter Rachel Howard’s (born 1969) exhibition at Newport Street Gallery features 14 paintings drawing on the Stations of the Cross, with a study of media images of the torture of Iraqi detainee Ali Shallal al-Qaisi by US soldiers in 2003.

From Bacon and Burroughs to Halley and Lucas: the art collection of Damien HirstThis unique publication presents a varied selection of works from Damien Hirst’s personal collection, including early pieces by Haim Steinbach, paintings by Francis Bacon, sculptures by Sarah Lucas, Peter Halley’s signature Day-Glo geometric canvases, large-scale works by Gary Hume and one of William S. Burroughs’ shotgun paintings. Other highlights include works by John Currin, Sherrie Levine, Helen Frankenthaler, Jeff Koons, Jannis Kounellis, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol and Franz West.This sleek, colorful, hardcover volume contains four fold-out sections and full-color plates. Accompanying the plates is an extract from a rare Burroughs text, “Painting and Guns,” first published by the cult American publisher Hanuman Books in 1992, in which Burroughs discusses the making of his shotgun art, and the relationship between painting and writing.

Idolatry, illusion, glitz and greed in Damien Hirst’s seminal sculpture and painting cyclesIn 2010, Gagosian Gallery staged a seminal exhibition of Damien Hirst’s (born 1965) paintings and sculptures. Titled End of an Era, it addressed concepts of illusion and reality, myth and idolatry, and took its name from the central sculpture in the exhibition: a severed bull’s head in a gold vitrine. The work served as a sequel to Hirst’s 2008 sculpture The Golden Calf, a formaldehyde-preserved bull.Alongside this sculpture, the exhibition showed Hirst’s Diamond Fact Paintings for the first time—a series of photorealist depictions of the world’s most illustrious jewels—as well as two Diamond Cabinets. This catalog collects these pieces and includes a catalogue raisonné of each series (Gold Tanks, Diamond Cabinets and Diamond Fact Paintings). The publication also features a conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hirst.