Executed in a vivid spattering of bright green and red, this watercolor on paper work from 1995 by Damien Hirst is a fantastic example of the artist’s iconic ‘Spin’ paintings which illustrate the fine line between chaos and control with explosive visual forms. Hirst’s ‘Spin’ paintings are some of the most recognizable of the artist's oeuvre and have become some of his most sought after body of work. As seen here, Hirst successfully plays with the interaction between color, space, and dynamic energy in a visually captivating way.

Contemporary British artist Damien Hirst’s (b.1965) œuvre is at once abstract, conceptual, romantic, baroque and minimal. Hirst, winner of the 1995 prestigious Tate Gallery Turner Prize, has been the most prominent and notorious member of the young British artists (YBAs). While still a student at Goldsmith's College in 1988, he curated the now renowned student exhibition, Freeze, featuring his friends' and his own work, and held in East London. With this exhibition, Hirst brought together a group of young artists who would come to define cutting-edge contemporary art in the 1990s. Hirst's work has generated enormous controversy, in part for its morbidity and fascination with medicine, which is evident in several of his series: the encased dead animals in various states of preservation, the incorporation of butterfly wings into stained glass-like images, cabinets filled with pharmaceuticals, and diamond-encrusted skulls. His art challenges the boundaries between high and low culture, art and science, and addresses the big questions of life, love, and death.

Select Public Collections:
Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Tate Gallery (London, UK)
Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, AU)