Damien Hirst: Colour Space Paintings

This book was published on the occasion of Damien Hirst: Colour Space Paintings, the first exhibition of the series in the United States at Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York.

Evolving from the iconic Spot paintings, the Colour Space paintings revisit the free and spontaneous nature of Hirst’s first two Spot paintings from 1986, exactly thirty years later. The series adheres to some of the formal rules established for the Spot paintings: no single color is ever repeated in a painting, and the dot size—ranging from one quarter of an inch to four inches in diameter—is consistent within each work. However, without the logic of the grid and the symmetry of the perfect circle, the Colour Space paintings appear looser, more stochastic, and more open to incident than the Spot paintings.

This publication documents the thirty exhibited works—twenty-nine paintings and a vitrine sculpture containing a severed shark preserved in formaldehyde—through individual plate images, details, and installation photography. It also includes new essays by Ann Gallagher and Blake Gopnik.