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Lot Essay
'To create that structure, to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour' (D. Hirst quoted in D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p.119)
Immediately striking in its triangular format, D Lysergic Acid is an extraordinary example of Damien Hirst's spot paintings. Executed in March of 1993, D-Lysergic Acid is one of eight unique paintings belonging to the Controlled Substance series which was exhibited in the influential Damien Hirst: The Acquired Inability to Escape Divided, The Acquired Inability to Escape Inverted and Divided and Other Works show at Galerie Jablonka, Cologne in the same year.
Ingeniously spelling out the painting's title through the sequential coding of its spots, the Controlled Substance paintings represent a significant divergence in Hirst's spot paintings, whereby the artist developed a unique alphanumeric key, assigning a letter or number to his corresponding shades of paint. Displayed alongside a codex painting decrypting its spots generates a moment of realisation as the painting reveals the letters of D-Lysergic Acid spelt out from the left to right. Each work in the Controlled Substance series shares its name with a drug which falls under government regulation, the narcotics reference cunningly concealed within its spots.
Exhibited at Galerie Jablonka alongside two major vitrine sculptures, and a cigarette cabinet, Dead Ends Died Out, Examined (1993), D Lysergic Acid was installed with a corresponding Controlled Substance key, directly beside The Acquired Inability to Escape Inverted and Divided; a large vitrine split horizontally in half, containing a desk chair and a table on which cigarettes, a lighter, and a full ashtray were suspended upside down. Hirst describes the dimensions, size, and shape of The Acquired Inability to Escape, as the perfect mathematical formula; its inversion further complicated when juxtaposed against enigmatic D-Lysergic Acid, embracing in the artist's words, 'the near nonsense of the logic' (D. Hirst quoted in S. Calle (eds.), nternal Affairs, exh. cat., ICA, London 1991, n.p.)
The cryptic, chromatic order of D-Lysergic Acid is established by the meticulously hand painted spots precisely calculated to fit the irregularly shaped canvas. As the artist has asserted 'to create that structure, to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour' (D. Hirst quoted in D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p.119). In decoding the logical grid-like formation, the minimalist aesthetic gives way to a complex symbolic language, its initial simplicity yielding to a more profound reality.
Immediately striking in its triangular format, D Lysergic Acid is an extraordinary example of Damien Hirst's spot paintings. Executed in March of 1993, D-Lysergic Acid is one of eight unique paintings belonging to the Controlled Substance series which was exhibited in the influential Damien Hirst: The Acquired Inability to Escape Divided, The Acquired Inability to Escape Inverted and Divided and Other Works show at Galerie Jablonka, Cologne in the same year.
Ingeniously spelling out the painting's title through the sequential coding of its spots, the Controlled Substance paintings represent a significant divergence in Hirst's spot paintings, whereby the artist developed a unique alphanumeric key, assigning a letter or number to his corresponding shades of paint. Displayed alongside a codex painting decrypting its spots generates a moment of realisation as the painting reveals the letters of D-Lysergic Acid spelt out from the left to right. Each work in the Controlled Substance series shares its name with a drug which falls under government regulation, the narcotics reference cunningly concealed within its spots.
Exhibited at Galerie Jablonka alongside two major vitrine sculptures, and a cigarette cabinet, Dead Ends Died Out, Examined (1993), D Lysergic Acid was installed with a corresponding Controlled Substance key, directly beside The Acquired Inability to Escape Inverted and Divided; a large vitrine split horizontally in half, containing a desk chair and a table on which cigarettes, a lighter, and a full ashtray were suspended upside down. Hirst describes the dimensions, size, and shape of The Acquired Inability to Escape, as the perfect mathematical formula; its inversion further complicated when juxtaposed against enigmatic D-Lysergic Acid, embracing in the artist's words, 'the near nonsense of the logic' (D. Hirst quoted in S. Calle (eds.), nternal Affairs, exh. cat., ICA, London 1991, n.p.)
The cryptic, chromatic order of D-Lysergic Acid is established by the meticulously hand painted spots precisely calculated to fit the irregularly shaped canvas. As the artist has asserted 'to create that structure, to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour' (D. Hirst quoted in D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p.119). In decoding the logical grid-like formation, the minimalist aesthetic gives way to a complex symbolic language, its initial simplicity yielding to a more profound reality.