Damien Hirst, And you know it? (The Currency)

Damien Hirst’s The Currency series consists of 10,000 unique hand-painted, colorful dot paintings, each created with a blend of artistic spontaneity and precision. The series explores the concept of value and the intersection between art and money, as each piece was initially tied to both a physical artwork and an NFT, forcing collectors to choose between the two. When a collector opted for the NFT, the physical artwork was publicly burned, underscoring Hirst’s provocative exploration of the shifting definitions of value in both the digital and physical art worlds. Through this process, Hirst challenges traditional notions of art ownership and authenticity, asking what truly gives art its worth in an era of blockchain and digital assets.

Britain’s most famous living artist and enfant terrible of the YBAs, Damien Hirst, is a conceptual artist, painter, printmaker, and assemblagist. His deliberately provocative art addresses vanitas, beauty, rebirth, medicine, and technology, often shocking and invigorating public debate on contemporary art. Mastering artistic self-promotion, Hirst transformed the romantic ideal of the artist into an entrepreneurial figure of modern commerce. Alongside Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Liam Gillick, Hirst became the leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He attended Goldsmiths College in London and curated the formative Freeze show in 1988, gaining the attention of media entrepreneur and art collector Charles Saatchi, an early patron. Damien Hirst refined Marcel Duchamp’s idea of ready-made objects, presenting dead animals in formaldehyde. In 1995, he won the Turner Prize with artworks including the controversial bisected cow and calf, titled Mother and Child (Divided). His preserved shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, was the centerpiece of Saatchi’s iconic YBA exhibition, Sensation, at the Royal Academy in 1997. Beyond installations and sculptures, Hirst’s limited edition prints, such as those based on his butterfly and spot paintings, are universally recognized. Damien Hirst’s print production often involves creating works in series, emphasizing themes of repetition and variation. Major solo exhibitions of his artwork were held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2008) and Tate Modern in London (2012). Born in 1965 in Bristol, Damien Hirst currently lives in London, United Kingdom.

Damien Hirst, And you know it? (The Currency)