Damien Hirst, focused and funny, is back at Gagosian in Hong Kong with his pickled sharks
‘I prefer them now to when I made them’, says British artist about show of early works featuring preserved animals, his first in Hong Kong since 2011, and quips he’s ‘the patron saint of tourism’ in Venice, site of his latest provocative show
In January 2011, when Hong Kong was still deciding whether it could reinvent itself as an arts hub, the New York dealer Larry Gagosian opened a gallery in the city. It was his 11th worldwide but his first in Asia.
Such an occasion required a megaphone artistic presence. At the time, there was really only one contender: Damien Hirst, one of the world’s wealthiest artists. He came, he obligingly brought the cast of a baby’s skull studded with 8,000 diamonds and global debate ensued (bling vs morality). Job done.
Six years later, he’s back. There have been other Hirst shows in the city: Gagosian galleries worldwide collectively showed 25 years’ worth of his spot paintings in 2012, while White Cube gallery had an exhibition of his entomology cabinets and scalpel-blade paintings in 2013. But the new show, “Visual Candy and Natural History”, at Gagosian in Central is mostly confined to works from 1993 and 1994, and, curiously, this exhibition feels like the introduction people might have expected in 2011.
For one thing, there are pickled sharks on show. Also pickled calves, pickled sheep, a pickled dove and a pickled oven-ready turkey (which, as the staff kindly point out, isn’t a Thanksgiving turkey). There’s a cow’s head laying in a puddle of fly-blown blood. There’s also a series of wildly exuberant paintings collectively called Visual Candy. And there are the memorable titles: Zipedeedoodar and Two Similar Swimming Forms in Infinite Flight (Broken) and Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded.