'The Virtues' Cherry Blossoms by Damien Hirst

This show features the iconic ‘Virtues’ series by Damien Hirst. The laminated giclée prints on aluminum panel were created in 2021 as a reflection of his latest exploration as a master contemporary Artist, mirroring the series of 107 ‘Cherry Blossom’ paintings which were exhibited for the first time at the Foundation Cartier in Paris, July 2021. Saturated with vibrant splatters of paint, each work is titled after one of The Eight Virtues of Bushidō according to Nitobe Inazō (Justice, Courage, Mercy, Politeness, Honesty, Honour, Loyalty, and Control.)

The series encapsulates Hirst’s iconic oeuvre, as he commented on the series; ”What I loved about them at first, was the way that they were kind of in between representational and abstract. I always imagined looking from underneath, at the canopy; they didn't have an up or down. But then towards the end, I started painting the trunk, and they became much more rooted in the ground. And I became happier with them looking a bit more like a tree, which I later became afraid of. Maybe that's why the trunks became more part of it, because in the beginning of the whole series, I was thinking more about being disconnected from the earth, whereas by the end of it, I wanted to be firmly rooted."

To Hirst, Cherry Blossoms represent beauty and life and death. In describing the pieces, he says “They’re extreme—there’s something almost tacky about them. Like Jackson Pollock twisted by love. They’re decorative but taken from nature. They’re about desire and how we process the things around us and what we turn them into, but also about the insane visual transience of beauty—a tree in full crazy blossom against a clear sky.”  Hirst said this of his process while creating, “I feel alive when I'm painting them. So I'm putting my life into it. It's a lot, you know, of climbing up a ladder, throwing paint, mixing big buckets, chinking them on the canvas from far away - all that energy of life is actually caught in the paint."