Damien Hirst News Cherry Blossoms to be exhibited at Fondation Cartier in Paris. Hirst’s latest paintings to be presented in the artist’s first museum exhibition in France. Renewal Blossom, 2018. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science, Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2019 16 December 2019 Damien Hirst is to exhibit his latest paintings, ‘Cherry Blossoms’, at Fondation Cartier in Paris. The solo exhibition will open in spring 2021. The result of two years of intense work in his London studio, the series is part of Hirst’s career-long investigation into painting. The Cherry Blossoms were begun shortly after Hirst’s sculptural project ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’ (2017). Referencing both Impressionism and Pointillism, as well as Action Painting, the series revisit the spontaneous joy of painting. The imagined mechanical painter, omnipresent in the ‘Spot’ and ‘Spin Paintings’ series, is replaced in the ‘Cherry Blossoms’ series by the fallibility of the hand of the artist working in his studio. Damien Hirst says: “The Cherry Blossoms are about beauty and life and death. 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. It’s been so good to make them, to be completely lost in colour and in paint in my studio. They’re garish and messy and fragile and about me moving away from Minimalism and the idea of an imaginary mechanical painter and that’s so exciting to me.” Social: Press enquiries Privacy Terms & Conditions Links Credits