Damien Hirst: Nothing Matters

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'I feel like I've arrived somewhere [...] In a completely different way, I feel I've got the tools to navigate somewhere. All that expression — doubts, fears, everything — can come out in this arena.' Damien Hirst in conversation with Gordon Burn, 2009 White Cube is pleased to present nineteen new paintings by Damien Hirst. The exhibition will be staged at White Cube Mason's Yard and White Cube Hoxton Square. At White Cube Hoxton Square, Hirst will present a group of paintings, which include three triptychs from 2007-09, each depicting crows shot in mid-flight against blue skies, with outspread wings and violent splatters of red paint across their bodies. In the four triptychs on show in the lower ground floor at White Cube Mason's Yard, these crows reappear, as omens of bad news. They often share the space with ghost-like figures, skeletal forms and objects, including chairs, lemons, knives, animal skulls, wine glasses or a scorpion. Rudi Fuchs begins his essay with the following reading of these paintings: 'When I try to pinpoint what the visual mood is in Hirst's new images, I am constantly reminded of Beckett — not of any one story in particular, though subject matter is important, but of the austere dryness of the language. Sentences are interrupted, lines are broken, observations are fragmented in order to direct us slowly towards a clearer perception of the real.'