opium
Condition reports and provenance available upon request
About This Work
Damien Hirst’s *Opium* distils the artist’s signature synthesis of clinical display and seductive surface, foregrounding the uneasy romance between desire, medicine, and mortality. Executed with Hirst’s cool, museum-like precision, the work reads as both object and proposition: an image of consumption staged with the clarity of the laboratory and the allure of luxury branding. Its highly controlled finish and conceptual economy align Hirst with Pop’s commodity critique and post-minimal strategies of seriality and presentation, while its title invokes narcotic escape and global trade histories. *Opium* remains culturally resonant in an era shaped by pharmaceutical culture, addiction narratives, and the aesthetics of the vitrine—inviting viewers to confront faith in systems that promise cure, pleasure, and permanence.
About the Artist
Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. Since the late 1980’s, Hirst has used a varied practise of...
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Contemporary Art • Hampstead, London
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