P4M ART REVIEW: DAMIEN HIRST: "THEORIES, MODELS, METHODS, APPROACHES, ASSUMPTIONS, RESULTS, AND FINDINGS"-- GAGOSIAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
Why do people insist on calling Damien Hirst a "bad boy" of art? Because he split a pig down the middle and exhibited the separated halves suspended in glass tanks of formaldehyde that you could walk between? People who aren't looking closely at Hirst's "sensational" work think he's concerned with death, but life and the way we use it-- the way we study, conceptualize, and commercialize it-- are his true subjects. That makes Hirst, in our book, as good a boy as there is.
Hirst's current show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York presents the fullest and most entertaining example yet of the artist's dissective yet life-affirming showmanship. Entitled "Theories, Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results, and Findings," the exhibition takes the form of a five-room, walk-through, mini amusement park whose theme appears to be anatomy. Among the displays: a glass cabinet of mammal skeletons; a human skeleton on a glass cross with bobbing ping-pong ball eyes; two not quite fastidiously-kept autopsy tables (complete with cheese sandwich and covered cadavers that gallery notes say are fake); another glass cabinet neatly displaying 8,000 hand-crafted, jewel-like, actual-size pills; a giant beach ball kept aloft by a column of air over a field of knife blades (a guard stands close by); still another glass cabinet with garbage bags of "body parts" and air fresheners; a commanding 20-foot-high painted bronze anatomical figure; and a couple of large glass tanks containing, in addition to water and fish, the mute remains of some potentially devastating or potentially harmless medical procedure: an examination chair, a table of surgical instruments, etc.
The show is both amusing and horrifying, dopey and majestic-- kinda the way life seems when you're not conceiving of it in sit-com cliches and feel-good movie formulas. Hirst seems to be drawing attention to the growing virulance of these cliches and formulas-- in fact, to the radical contingency (the fragility!) of both life and our ways of thinking about it. Ironically, this is best summed up by the show's least sensationalistic installation: two large, apparently identical glass cubes with ping-pong balls blowing around inside them. In one box, the balls are flurrying in a much more satisfying frenzy-- and this is the box whose floor slopes downward at a slightly greater angle toward the central air blower, making it easier for more of the balls to roll inward and get caught up in the updraft. The point seems to be that one tiny factor, easy to overlook, can make the difference between an idea that just barely works-- like "the sanctity of life"-- and one that doesn't.
Hirst's current show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York presents the fullest and most entertaining example yet of the artist's dissective yet life-affirming showmanship. Entitled "Theories, Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results, and Findings," the exhibition takes the form of a five-room, walk-through, mini amusement park whose theme appears to be anatomy. Among the displays: a glass cabinet of mammal skeletons; a human skeleton on a glass cross with bobbing ping-pong ball eyes; two not quite fastidiously-kept autopsy tables (complete with cheese sandwich and covered cadavers that gallery notes say are fake); another glass cabinet neatly displaying 8,000 hand-crafted, jewel-like, actual-size pills; a giant beach ball kept aloft by a column of air over a field of knife blades (a guard stands close by); still another glass cabinet with garbage bags of "body parts" and air fresheners; a commanding 20-foot-high painted bronze anatomical figure; and a couple of large glass tanks containing, in addition to water and fish, the mute remains of some potentially devastating or potentially harmless medical procedure: an examination chair, a table of surgical instruments, etc.
The show is both amusing and horrifying, dopey and majestic-- kinda the way life seems when you're not conceiving of it in sit-com cliches and feel-good movie formulas. Hirst seems to be drawing attention to the growing virulance of these cliches and formulas-- in fact, to the radical contingency (the fragility!) of both life and our ways of thinking about it. Ironically, this is best summed up by the show's least sensationalistic installation: two large, apparently identical glass cubes with ping-pong balls blowing around inside them. In one box, the balls are flurrying in a much more satisfying frenzy-- and this is the box whose floor slopes downward at a slightly greater angle toward the central air blower, making it easier for more of the balls to roll inward and get caught up in the updraft. The point seems to be that one tiny factor, easy to overlook, can make the difference between an idea that just barely works-- like "the sanctity of life"-- and one that doesn't.
posted by Lucia Toledo at 9:49 AM
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