Home Artworks Sanctum Dome

Sanctum Dome

2001

Default

96 x 96 cm
38 x 37.80 in

Year

2001

Medium

Drawings & Works on Paper

Reference

d1b37f9e

Paper, Photogravure etching in edition of 59, 96 x 96 cm.

Fashioned from butterfly wings and household paint, Damien Hirst’s ‘Psalm’ series combine the dizzying symmetry of a kaleidoscope with the radiant beauty of a rose window. Each of the 150 pieces in the series are named after a biblical psalm, and were conceived by the artist in 2001 after he found a Victorian tea tray decorated with intricate patterns of butterfly wings. The works reference the spiritual symbolism of the butterfly, used by the Greeks to depict Psyche, the soul, and in Christian imagery to signify the resurrection. The perfect symmetry which characterizes the ‘Psalms’ alludes to both the displays of light, colour and beauty as presented in Gothic, stained glass windows, and the circular patterns of Buddhist mandalas. Each piece might variously be interpreted as explorations into the nature of beauty, religion, death and the fragility of life.

1965 Bristol, United Kingdom

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol (UK) and he grew up in Leeds. At the age of nineteen, he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college. Already during his second year of college, he conceived and curated a group exhibition, which was entitled ‘Freeze'. This exhibition was acknowledged to have been the launching point for Hirst, but especially for a generation of British artists.                                                                                                                                                                             Since the beginning of his career, around the late 1980s, Hirst has used a varied practice of installation, sculpture, painting and drawing to explore the complex relationship between art, life and death, showing his conception about the fact that art is about life, because there is not anything else. Through his work, he investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, and dissects the uncertainties at the heart of human experience.


Read more

Address

London, 436 King's Rd, Chelsea

Tanya Baxter contemporary, based in London and Hong Kong, is a leading art advisory and gallery with nearly twenty-five years’ experience working in the Post-Modern, Modern British and Contemporary art market. The London Gallery, established in 1998, is situated in Chelsea. The Art Advisory office in Hong Kong is based in the up and coming Wong Chuk Hang D...

Read more