From July 6, 2021 to January 2, 2022, the Fondation Cartier invites us to discover Cerisiers en Fleurs, an exceptional exhibition by artist Damien Hirst. Indeed, this is the artist's first institutional exhibition, in France. By extending spring, Cerisiers en Blossoms plunges us into a profusion of petals, exacerbating their poetic dimension.
Portrait of Damien Hirst
Born in 1965 in the United Kingdom, Damien Hirst became known thanks to the group exhibition Freeze he organized in 1988. This event marks the birth of the Young British Artists group, which conducts their own exhibitions in unconventional locations such as warehouses and factories. Their goal is then to experiment and develop new creative processes.
Quickly, the artist interests Charles Saatchi, collector, gallery owner and future great patron. The latter then financed his work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a large showcase that contains a shark suspended in formaldehyde. From the Natural History series, his animals immersed in the huge formalin aquariums become emblematic works. Works that will slowly disappear.
Through sculpture, installation, painting and drawing, Damien Hirst explores the complex relationships between art, life and death. Between excess and fragility, death really irrigates his approach, or rather the "unacceptable idea" of death. Redefining sculpture and installation, he also develops one of his emblematic themes: "science is the new religion for many people".
An artist between success and controversy
On June 21, 2007, Sotheby's sold the work Lullaby Spring for $19.2 million (€14.34 million). This is a metal medicine cabinet containing 6136 individually painted handmade pills. In August of the same year, he broke a new record with the work For the Love of God, a platinum replica of a skull of an eighteenth-century man, set with 8,601 diamonds. A memento mori then sold for $ 100 million. But, in the documentary Art Explodes, journalist and art critic Ben Lewis will reveal that an investment group, to which the artist would belong, would have bought the work. An investment that would then have preserved its rating in the art market.
The use of animals and butterflies in his works makes Damien Hirst a very controversial artist. Her 1993 Turner Prize-winning work Mother and Child, Divided has been highly criticized.
A practice of painting
Painting also occupies an essential place for the artist. He describes painting as a way to "seek the joy of color." He said, "Imagine a world of points. Every time I make a painting, it's like a piece of this universe was cut out of it. They are all connected. »
In 1986, he began the series Spot Paintings, inspired by abstract expressionism and the work of Louise Nevelson. This series, also called Dots paintings, represents colored dots that seem to be made by a machine. Today we have more than a thousand paintings of varying dimensions and titles (which evoke the medical world). The Visual Candy series (1993-1995) consists of thick spots and acid colors that overlap. Colour Space (2016) explores the infinite potential of colour. Gradually, the artist highlights in his painting, the importance of matter and color, as perfectly evidenced by Les Cerisiers en Blossoms.
Let us quote the words of the artist: "I have always been a great lover of painting and yet I have constantly sought to move away from it. As a young artist, one is necessarily influenced by the trends of the moment, and in the 1980s painting was not in tune with the times. »
The genesis of the exhibition
After many controversies, Damien Hirst gives us to see an aesthetic that is both sweet and poetic. After his sculpture project Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable which lasted ten years, he returned to his studio to start the series Cerisiers en Blossoms. This series follows his Veil Paintings (2017), thick tree-like touches.
Alone, in his studio, he devoted himself entirely to this series for three whole years. A series he completed in November 2020. The pandemic has truly marked the artist's creative process. Indeed, he states that: "The pandemic allowed me to live with my paintings and take the time to contemplate them, until I was sure they were all finished."
It was during a meeting between the artist and Hervé Chandès, the Executive Director of the Fondation Cartier , that his first major solo exhibition in Paris was born. Among the 107 paintings from the series, the Foundation presents 30.
An immersion in color
In the four large rooms of the Foundation, the Cerisiers en Fleurs invade the picture rails. We find paintings exhibited alone, in diptychs, triptychs, quadriptychs. The visitor is then immersed in the heart of these canvases, sometimes large formats, sometimes monumental. In contrast to the white cube, the colors appear bright and saturated. Through this framing and these specific planes, the border between figuration and abstraction becomes porous.
Damien Hirst tirelessly declines in this series, the same motif: that of cherry blossoms. Far from being repetitive, his gesture explores all the variations of this subject: color, matter, touch. From pink to green, through blue, white and red, the colors are declined and appear like confetti. Beyond these vibrant colors, the touch is either light or dense, but never identical. As for the pictorial material, the artist plays with thicknesses. Sometimes smooth, sometimes grainy and cracked, the paint is always drying…
An ode to life
In his cherry blossoms, Damien Hirst invites us to contemplation. By reconnecting with a much freer pictorial gesture, he highlights the flowering cycle. The choice of this topos is a childhood memory when his mother painted cherry blossoms. At the heart of these immense canvases, the artist then paints an ode to beauty, life and the ephemeral. Giving the impression of springing from the canvas, the wide variety of colors materializes life. At the heart of the artist's gesture, the painting comes to life, giving the impression of capturing an ephemeral moment. The moment when the light like a prism makes the flowers and leaves, take a singular color, namely in red or blue.
But the artist's work is always in chiaroscuro. Behind this ode to life, there is death, always omnipresent in him. Indeed, death is part of life. Thus, violence and delicacy, excess and austerity, cynicism and idealism create a constant dialogue at the heart of this exhibition. It is then a celebration of color in the midst of chaos.
The artist says: "The 'Cherry Blossoms' speak of beauty, life and death. They are excessive — almost vulgar. (…) They are ornamental but painted from nature. (…) Les Cerisiers en Fleurs are flashy, messy and fragile, and thanks to them, I moved away from minimalism to return enthusiastically to the spontaneity of the pictorial gesture. »
Cherry blossoms as a tribute
In his London studio, he then immersed himself in paintings, working on several paintings at the same time. He painted his canvases standing, in order to respect the gravity of the trees from the ground to the sky. The series Cerisiers en fleurs is a continuation of Damien Hirst's pictorial reflections. Thus, he gives us both a reinterpretation of a traditional subject – flowering – and also a tribute to the history of art. But always with irony.
It thus echoes the pictorial movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as impressionism, pointillism or action painting. We then find references to Georges Seurat, Pierre Bonnard, Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning.
Like cherry blossoms, the exhibition is part of an ephemeral temporality. Shown for the very first time, this series of 30 works is brought together for the last. Indeed, after the exhibition, the works will be dispersed in different private and public collections. An immersive and ephemeral experience not to be missed.
You can also find other articles on JustFocus dedicated to the different exhibitions of the moment: the exhibition Napoleon and on Precious Stones.
