Color Me Dizzy: Hirst's Spin on Modern Art at Albertina Modern
From May 7 to October 12, 2025, the Albertina Modern in Vienna is hosting “Damien Hirst - Drawings”, the first comprehensive museum exhibition of Damien Hirst's works on paper.
More photos can be found on my Gallery-Website.
Exhibition view “Damien Hirst - Drawings”, Albertina Modern, 2025
This exhibition offers a fascinating insight into Hirst’s creative process, starting with drawings and sketches produced from the 1980s onward. Many of these drawings were created in preparation for some of the artist’s most pioneering works, and a selection is displayed alongside related paintings and sculptures. The exhibition highlights Hirst’s conceptual approach to drawing—used at times as an initial study, at others as a standalone work: the big paper formats might hint to the fact that even these were productized from the beginning and planned to be monetarized. Additionally, most of them have a Damien Hirst signature but they werent even from him - his assistantes produced them … in his opinion, the idea counts, not the production itself.
Damien Hirst's fascination with the cycle of life and death is vividly manifested in his renowned Natural History series, where he famously preserved animals like sharks and sheep in formaldehyde. While these installations are widely recognized, the Drawings exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the preparatory sketches and conceptual drawings that underpin these works.
Visitors encounter detailed renderings of dissected animals, including a crucified cow and formaldehyde-immersed sheep.
The exhibition's interactive highlight though is Making Beautiful Drawings, an installation featuring a custom-built spin machine developed by Hirst in 1994. This device allows visitors to create their own Spin Drawings by applying paint or using a crayon on a rotating disc, embracing the unpredictability of motion and color blending. Unfortunately, this machine can be used only one day a week. Using this machine transforms the museum visitor into creators, as Hirst himself noted, engaging with the spin machine allows individuals to "feel like artists". One might argue if thats sufficient enough to be an artist though…
My very own spin drawing - I leave it to the viewer to judge the artistic merit of the piece…
Spin Drawing by me - aiming for a color match with the Albertina Modern colors …
