Damien Hirst with the Coast Paintings, 2019 © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
HENI presents Where the Land Meets the Sea — a selection of works from Damien Hirst’s latest paintings series — at Phillips’ 30 Berkeley Square London galleries this summer. Shown in public exhibition for the first time, the Coast Paintings, Sea Paintings, and Seascapes series will be on view from 20 July through 18 August.
The series was inspired by Hirst’s lifelong connection to the sea. Drawing influence from Abstract Expressionism, namely Robert Motherwell’s Beside the Sea series from the 1960s, the works in Where the Land Meets the Sea wonderfully evoke Hirst’s pastime of walking on the beach and watching the sea, most recently in the UK during the winter. Cheyenne Westphal, Phillips’ Global Chairwoman, notes that “this immersive showcase invites viewers to contemplate themes of mortality and existence, as we join in celebrating Hirst’s unrelenting quest to challenge artistic boundaries.”
Ahead of the exhibition, Damien Hirst remarked, “Where the Land Meets the Sea is an exploration inspired by the seaside in gray British winters; I grew up in Leeds in West Yorkshire and often holidayed in Scarborough, Filey, Whitby, where Count Dracula landed, Robin Hood’s Bay, and Skegness. I have always spent a lot of time walking and thinking on the beach and watching the sea, witnessing the powerful action of the crashing waves in winter. It gives me a feeling of unimportance and vastness and inevitability, that this whole world and everything in it will eventually wear out to nothing.”
Coast Paintings
Damien Hirst, Treyarnon Bay, 2019. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Coast Paintings is a series of abstract action paintings named after British seaside locations. These paintings began their life as gray canvases which were laid on the floor of Hirst’s studio while he painted his acclaimed Cherry Blossoms series, catching ricochets of paint intended for the blossoms. As he recognized the beauty of these chance splatters of color, Hirst developed these canvases into a series of paintings.
The works in Coast Paintings intend to convey the energy, excitement, and change experienced by the seaside in winter. The artist at times leaves vast passages of the underlying gray canvas exposed to evoke the wintertime sky. As such, the Coast Paintings emerge almost as aerial maps or satellite images of shimmering coastlines, as seen through pockets of cloud cover.
Studio view, Coast Paintings, 2019. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Sea Paintings
Damien Hirst, Whitecap, 2022. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
The Sea Paintings series marks the latest iteration in Hirst’s long-established practice of producing paintings after photographs — what he calls “Fact Paintings.” They freeze the power and energy of coastal storms in grayscale and echo the temperament of the British coastlines that Hirst has observed during winter.
Created in 2022, the Sea Paintings represent Hirst’s longtime grappling with photography, a medium which has remained a complicating force for painters since the first photograph. Hirst has wrestled with photography since childhood, when he was told, “When you can paint like a photograph then you’re a real artist!”
Paired with dark, encroaching clouds, these dynamic images of coastal storms are frozen in time through the single click of a button. The chance energetic moments were then slowly painted over months and years. In doing so, throwaway photographic moments become immortalized in paint. The series is embedded with a juxtaposition between chance and intention, order and chaos.
Damien Hirst, Propagation, 2022. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Seascapes
Damien Hirst, Black Ice, 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Damien Hirst’s Seascapes join the photorealistic imagery of his Sea Paintings series with the expressionistic splatters of his Coast Paintings, capturing the scenes and sensations of crashing seas. At the base of Seascapes are duplicates of the works from Hirst’s Sea Paintings series, to which the artist created additional and tactile layers of action through splattered paint.
Speaking to the relationship between Seascapes and Sea Paintings, Hirsts says that they “could maybe be seen in pairs as each series compliments and references the other.” He went on to note that “in each series, we see two types of action or forces at work — the captured actual energy in thrown and moving thick paint over a carefully painted photographic image, and in the other, the faithfully painted reproduction of a captured moment.”
Damien Hirst, Cyclone, 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Studio view, Where the Land Meets the Sea, 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023.
Exhibition /
Where the Land Meets the Sea
20 July – 18 August 2023
Phillips London
30 Berkeley Square
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