Damien Hirst: Schizophrenogenesis, Paul Stolper

After the success of Damien Hirst’s recent retrospective at Tate Modern in 2012 , Paul Stolper reaffirms the artist’s position in the contemporary art world in this latest exhibition based upon the repeated motif of the medicinal pill. 

Damien Hirst artwork 
Hirst, the most prominent amongst the Young British Artists made famous by Charles Saatchi’s exhibition of the group in 1992, first came to prominence when he conceived and curated the exhibition ‘Freeze’ of his own work, and that of his friends and fellow students at Goldsmiths. From sharks in formaldehyde, ‘The Physical Impossibility of death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (1991) to diamond encrusted skulls, ‘For the Love of God’ (2007), Hirst is now an internationally-recognised household name.

Damien Hirst medical motifs
‘Schizophrenogenesis’ returns to the identification of medicine as a belief system like religion, love and art; a theme which has run throughout Hirst’s life in works such as  ‘A Thousand Years’ (1990) and  ‘Pharmacy’ (1992) where the artist struggled with the divide between life and death, and our relationship with science and the pharmaceutical industry. For Hirst ‘art is about life and it can’t really be about anything else. There isn’t anything else’. 
The exhibition itself feels like falling down the rabbit hole: tiny objects are blown up to a fantastical scale and bland colours are replaced by a lurid, pop candy palette. Dominating the space is a three metre neon sign which reads ‘Schizophrenogenesis’, looming over the viewer as both a warning sign and a beacon. Alongside are an assortment of enormous resin pills as well as medicine bottles, pharmaceutical boxes, syringes, scalpels and drug packaging. A wall of thirty silkscreen prints entitled ‘The Cure’, with two colour pills set against each background, adds to this surreal playground which uses the manipulation of scale to explore the aesthetic of medicines.