British visual artist Damien Hirst will attempt to connect the world with his art early next year, by holding concurrent exhibitions of his ‘Spot’ paintings in cities including New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong.
Hirst told the New York Times that he’d always hoped to set up a multi-venue exhibition of this series of his work, and had previously laid the groundwork at the Tate Britain and Saatchi Gallery in London. However, those plans fell through and this will be the first successful attempt at such a display.
The plan hit full stride once Hirst contacted art dealer Larry Gagosian, who explained to the NY Times that the simultaneous events would provide art-lovers with a one-of-a-kind and certainly unorthodox experience.
“We rarely even send a show to a second space and have never done anything like this before,” Gagosian said. “But for a whole generation of collectors who might not know Mondrian canvases or Ellsworth Kelly’s early colour charts, the ‘Spot’ paintings are an introduction to abstraction. They’ve become an iconic image of an age.”
The exhibitions will be aided by donations from Hirst collectors the world over and organisers expect more than 300 pieces to be displayed from Greece to China.
For the time being, though, Hirst plans to continue his forays into the ‘Spot’ series, telling the NY Times that he’s currently enlisted several assistants to create a painting consisting of one million small spots.
He conceded that the piece in question is not likely to be completed for almost a decade.
