From May 12-July 28, 2012, IKON Limited Contemporary Art in Santa Monica will show a mixture of Damian Hirst's work. Some spot paintings, some spin paintings and some butterfly paintings will be on view. The artist, will most likely, not.
Perhaps most interesting of the mix will be a chance to see some of the lesser known butterfly paintings. These paintings were inspired by HIrst's observations of the flies that would get caught in his paintings while he was immersed in work on them, and therefore stuck. Taking this observation further, he decided to put real dead butterflies onto canvas and call it art. Choosing a super high gloss paint to stick the miniature and beautiful corpses only intensified the inner glory and beauty of such a horror in a morbidly yet lush way. This is the artist's intention and it works. Even though most of his other work leaves a taste of gimmick and play in the mouth, these paintings seem to accomplish what he set out to create: an intersection of art, accident, nature and human morbidity that plays itself out accidentally into a pattern-packed and colorful work of art.
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