BY CAROLINE MACKINNON/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
February 28, 2006

he body count is mounting. For the first time, British artist Damien Hirst has brought his
formaldehyde-drenched sheep cadavers, skull-adorned spin paintings and butterfly carcass collages to Mexico. The show, entitled “The Death of God: Towards a Better Under standing of a Life without God aboard the Ship of Fools,” opened last week at the Hilario Galguera gallery in the capital. Critics and fans alike are curious to see how Hirst’s taste for the pro fane will go over in predominantly Catholic Mexico City.
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.

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