Damien Hirst’s iconic Spot Paintings, a series now almost three decades old, are a recognizable symbol for contemporary art. The present lot, Rhodanine comes from the first of the thirteen sub-series, the Pharmaceutical Paintings, titled after chemical compounds. Each of these works engage with the most essential qualities of painting – color, form and composition – and relates them to the building blocks of science. Rhodanine is a paradigm for these signature works, composed of vibrant spots painted in shiny gloss against a stark white, rectangular canvas. The spots range in color from dark hues to saturated neons to soft pastels, they interact with each other in unique visual combinations, just as the individual components of chemical compounds; no two the same, they can create an infinite possibility of arrangements. Hirst acknowledged the series’ scientific parallels when he said, "the spot paintings could be what art looks like viewed through an imaginary microscope" (Damien Hirst in I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, p. 246)

Through this microscope, Hirst calls attention to how a flat surface can be transformed by a simple matrix of color. He once said, “The spot paintings always surprise me. There’s so little there but it looks so vibrant on the wall.” Minimalist yet poignant, surprising yet predictable, the mass of repetitive color in Rhodanine negates the spontaneity of expressionist painting styles like those of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and instead recalls the materiality of Pop Artists like Roy Lichenstein and Andy Warhol through careful mechanization. However, unlike these artists who use the dot as a means to produce an image, Hirst mass produces the dot itself, rendering Rhodanine with the most seemingly basic elements he produces a visually complex surface compound.