Damien Steven Hirst (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector.
He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List.
During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.
Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britart worldwide.
His exhibition titled “New Religion”, presented at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), provides a characteristic as well as comprehensive overview of his artistic practice, his way of working and his subjects.
Through his visual arts practice, Hirst draws a descriptive anatomy of his era, while testing its boundaries. His work is characterized by clarity of images and by the immediacy of the message.
Completely free of guilt, through risk and boldness, he uses and manipulates the mechanisms of creation and the devices of recognition of contemporary art.
“New Religion” is Damien Hirst’s first solo show in Greece.
