All but two of the pieces were sold the day after the opening, and you can be sure they weren’t bought by those on a budget. Last year at his show in New York, prices for his paintings of images of drug addicts, soccer hooligans and medical surgeries ranged from US$250,000 to US$2 million.
Sales like these have made Hirst the world’s richest living artist, and he has been known to sell all the pieces from a show before it has even opened.
Last year his piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living,” a 14-ft tiger shark encased in formaldehyde, was sold by well-known collector Charles Saatchi to U.S. collector Steve Cohen, for nearly US$12 million.
The exhibit is like a mini-retro spective, giving a taste of the differ ent types of pieces Hirst has tried his hand at over the past decade and a half, from his formaldehyde-filled tanks with crucified rams and can dy-colored spot paintings to his re cent photo-realistic paintings of stuff that litters his studio.
Upon climbing the gallery’s stairs, you’re greeted by “The In escapable Truth” a tank in which a white dove with outstretched wings is suspended above a human skull.
A white and pale grey spin paint ing with a sea anemone-eyed skull at its axis hangs in the same room. Hirst creates his signature spin paintings by rotating a circular piece of wood at different speeds and splashing paint on it so that the colors are mixed by the movement of the object.
A photo-realistic painting of ob jects from his current studio graces another wall, detailing surgical tools, knives and, of course, a skull all on the reflective surface of a bur nished stainless steel table.