Colours and Pills: Infinity and Beyond

A few posts ago I mentioned Damien Hirst’s spot paintings, in this post I’m going to talk briefly about one of my favourite Hirst pieces, Infinity (2001). This is going to be brief, but I’m going to comment on the relationship between Infinity and the spot paintings.

I know that Hirst said “I imagine the spot paintings are what my art looks like under the microscope”, I know what he means, I think a load of ball bearings is what my blog looks like under the same microscope. Medication also make a frequent appearance in Hirst’s work, in fact, some of the spot paintings are even named after drugs.

Infinity, 2001 - Damien Hirst

 

With Inifinity, I think Hirst is commenting on the abstract nature of emotion and of colour – that they both exist, but share an unattainable quality. As humans,  the purest form of any colour or emotion appear to be unavailable to us. Indeed, they may not even exist. And if they did, how would we know anyway? All we can do is synthesize the experience with paint and pills. These pills, they all have an aim, they all attempt to induce an emotion or experience, but they aren’t perfect and they don’t last forever. Whether they reduce pain or stimulate the brain, they can only do so much before damaging the body.

 

There is only purity in the abstract, and the abstract, by definition, can only ever be represented our incomplete rendering of it. 

I think that’s one of the themes.

~ by Alex on March 14, 2009.