Damien Hirst completed his first spot painting in 1986. Envisioned as an endless series, the project now includes over 1,000 works created over the course of nearly three decades. In an interview Hirst said, “I have always liked series…I like it when there is more than one way of saying something. Like songs in an album.”(D. Hirst, E. Cicelyn, M. Codognato, M. D'Argenzio, "Pharmaceutical Heaven," Damien Hirst: Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli, 2004, p. 96). Painted in 2005, Asp-Val exemplifies the later stages of the prolific Spot Paintings project on an intimate scale.
Hirst has used the spot paintings to investigate the bounds of painting as a medium. At the time of his education the emotional vigor of 1950s Abstract Expressionism was championed by the artistic community. Rather than capturing a raw, emotional state with oil on canvas, Hirst distills painting to a scientific approach. In each work, spots are laid across the canvas at regular intervals. He intended for the Spot Paintings to appear made by “...a person trying to paint like a machine” (D. Hirst, R. Violette, "On Painting Dumb," Damien Hirst: I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, London, 2005, p. 251).
With their systematic format, Hirst believes that the Spot Paintings recall “the drug companies’ scientific approach to life” (Ibid, p. 246). Asp-Val belongs to a particular set of spot paintings called the “Carbon-13 Labelled Compounds.” In chemistry, labeled compounds are used as intermediate substances in the synthesis of other compounds. Hirst uses this technical terminology to reiterate the scientific approach of the series.
Despite apparent uniformity, a distinct unease pervades in each iteration of the Spot Paintings. Every spot on each canvas is painted in a distinct hue: sky blue, canary yellow, burnt orange, forest green and flushed pink. Because no color is repeated twice, there is no clear focus. Like nearly all of Hirst’s Spot Paintings, Asp-Val pulsates between the fixity of its grid and the chromatic chaos of the dots. The observer’s eye does not settle on a single point, but wanders throughout the canvas, stimulated by the possibility of infinitely variable color.
In 2012 Asp-Val was featured in Gagosian Gallery’s major exhibition “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986 – 2011.” The present lot provides a seminal example of Hirst’s project and his interrogation of painting, color and abstraction in the contemporary era.