Colour Chart – H2

Damien Hirst once claimed that ‘art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else…there isn’t
anything else’. His unique practice, which includes installation, sculpture, painting and drawing, strives
to interrogate the core tensions and contradictions of the human experience.

In 2017, Hirst produced, in partnership with HENI Editions, a series of 250 ‘Colour Charts’. These images
juxtapose boxes of colours in structured compositions, resembling commercial paint charts from DIY
stores, complete with name tags and numbered codes. As with the rest of Hirst’s oeuvre, ‘Colour Charts’
evoke the everyday human struggles of seeing, desiring and living.

The ‘Colour Charts’ series constituted a new milestone in Hirst’s quest to reproduce ‘the joy of colour’ in
his practice, building on his extensive ‘Spots’ series (1986‐2011). Inspired by Pop Art and readymade
works, Hirst transformed ordinary, functional tools into evocative objects, which capture and amplify
the interactive potentials of colour.

The goal of these images is to increase the visual power of colours by juxtaposing them within a
systematic grid framework. Painstakingly reproduced with either gloss or glitter paint, these prints are
vibrant and mesmerising. They allow viewers to lose themselves in the neat, harmonious arrangements
of colours.

For Hirst, however, the ‘Colour Charts’ are not only beautiful images, but also provocative objects. By
reproducing what is seen in everyday life under a new light, these works question, he claimed, the
nature of art itself. Removed from their context, isolated and forcefully inserted into the intellectual
realm of ‘high art’, the ‘Colour Charts’ may variously shock, outrage, fascinate and inspire their viewers.