Damien Hirst

White Cube, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1992

Damien Hirst and Robert Violette, Ed., I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London 1997, p. 234, illustrated in colour

Suspended in eleven rows and nine columns, the ninety-nine unique-colour circles of Adenosine comprise one of the earliest and most serene of Damien Hirst's iconic Spot paintings. Each colour sphere is carefully individualised in hue, but together the household gloss-paint discs span the entire chromatic spectrum. This work is a key constituent of the breakthrough painting series that brought Hirst to international attention and garnered widespread critical acclaim. Its creation was contemporaneous with the very first "Young British Artists" show at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992, which led to Hirst's nomination that year for the coveted Turner Prize. Adenosine is thus not only exceptionally beautiful, exquisitely made and dialectically complex, but also of major historic significance.

Hirst has long been transfixed with the life sciences, especially pharmacology as the analysis of how substances effect change in living organisms. Important to various biochemical processes, the drug adenosine is a white crystalline powder that promotes sleep by inhibiting neurotransmission. It is a powerful anti-inflammatory, though side effects of its administration can include lightheadedness, heavy sweating and nausea.

Drugs have become the ubiquitous modifier of Nature: the remit of human existence is continually conditioned by the powers of modern science, from pre-birth sedatives dealt through the placenta, to near-death stimulants fed through an intravenous drip. During the period when the Spot cycle was in production, the critic Jerry Saltz commented "The names of these drugs conjure a vision of human misery and dread. With every drug comes a reference to a particular sickness, along with a list of side effects...These drugs form an analogue for the mysteries of the human body and its vast hermetic complexity" (Jerry Saltz, Art in America, June 1995, cited in Damien Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London 1997, p. 173).

The creation of new drugs is a human passion, tasked with prolonging life. Adenosine confronts Humanity's idea of faith in the unwavering progress of science, a theme that is seminal to the artist: "I can't understand why some people believe completely in medicine but not in art, without questioning either" (the artist cited in Damien Hirst, Ibid, p. 24). In the context of drugs as the sacrament in the religion of "more life", Adenosine becomes a pharmacological altarpiece.

The iconography of this work is the simple schema of geometric logic. Self-restricted by a grid, it is impossible for Hirst to expand an emotive content: the only variation is the colour and tone of the spots, which, according to the formula, must remain perennially unrelated. The strict organisation of the dots competes with the rhythms of their variations, encouraging the eye to find patterns. The viewer's roaming focus is desperate to establish order within the confined space. This is symptomatic of the desire to organise and to structure the chaos of Nature with order. Ultimately this contributes to the inevitably undermined attempt to evade death. By positing the spectator as unwitting participant in Humanity's global paranoia of death, Hirst implicates the irresistible attraction of life-giving inherent to modern science.

Hirst's infamous preoccupation with death inhabits the kernel of his best work, resulting in strong and frequently-noted parallels with the corpus of Francis Bacon. Rooted in his obsession with mortality, Adenosine's pharmaceutical enquiry interrogates the organisation of belief systems. Presuming nothing, Hirst's questioning has been ceaseless: "Legal drugs are much more frightening than the illegal kind" (Hirst interviewed by Stuart Morgan in Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Gagosian Gallery, Damien Hirst: No Sense of Absolute Corruption, 1996, p. 10). Whether reminiscent of the flashing light emitting diodes of a simple analogue computer, or of Roy Lichtenstein's Pop Art manipulation of Benday colour dots, Adenosine's simple formation invokes mechanical production.

However, despite offering the outward characteristics of automation, this work fundamentally embraces the act of painting: everyday domestic paint has been skilfully applied through a gestural process and has created a sublimely beautiful surface. Hirst's complex dialectic, founded in themes of death and challenging faith structures, is ultimately revealed through the cheerful simplicity of colour:  "I love colour. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz. I hate taste - it's acquired" (the artist cited in Damien Hirst, Ibid, p. 246). His aim is to motivate an audience to think about the terms of their existence, and this ontological project is absolutely in progress. Thus the significance of this work must also be seen in the context of Hirst's subsequent and ongoing output. The pre-eminent artist of his generation and already the proprietor of a momentous canon, Hirst's continuing definition of an extraordinary oeuvre signposts the groundbreaking work very much yet to come. Adenosine will forever remain a major formative work in the output of the most important artist of his generation.