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Biography: Damien Hirst has defined and drawn attention to a generation of young British artists. From the controversy of Separated from the flock (a lamb preserved in a glass tank, which was vandalised when included in the exhibition Hirst curated for the Serpentine Gallery in 1994, 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away'), to the political storm surrounding the arrival of 'Sensation' in Brooklyn this year, his work has redefined international expectations of British art. Hirst, who grew up in Leeds, is also often credited with helping to refocus the London art world from West End Galleries to the industrial spaces of the city. This shift followed the success of 'Freeze', a 1988 Goldsmiths' College show he organised, which took place in a docklands warehouse. The unavoidable part of Hirst's work is its unblinking confrontation with death, mortality and the brevity of life, whether it is in the form of a 14-foot long tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) or the beauty of a disused shop full of butterfly pupae, hatching from white canvasses, feeding on sugar syrup, mating, laying eggs and dying: In and Out of Love (1991). But there is another strategy where, through his titles and black humor, he collapses the formal clarity of the works and its apparently melancholy message, and makes the viewer reconsider the ambivalent creativity that is at work. 'I want to set up situations that make people try to find meaning. I don't think my interpretations are important on a large scale', he says. Though he has pointed out that in With Dead Head (1991) a photograph showing the youthful Hirst in a mortuary, smiling beside the head of a corpse, his expression betrays fear or nervousness rather than delight. Country: England Birthyear: 1965 Galleries: MOCA Public Offerings April 1 -- July 29, 2001 PERMANENT COLLECTIONS Arts Council of Great Britain Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway Beckman Foundation, New York Bohen Foundation, New York British Council, UK Caldic Collection, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Denver Art Museum, USA DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece Deutsche Bank, London Fondazione Sandretto, Turin, Italy Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy Groeninge Group, Belgium Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, USA Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel Kunst Museum, Wolfsburg Museum of Modern Art, New York Paine Webber Art Collection, New York Rubell Family Foundation, Miami, USA Saatchi Gallery, London Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, USA Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tate gallery, London Weltkunst Fondation, Dublin, Ireland Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 'Damien Hirst', Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, UK, 1998 'The Beautiful Afterlife', Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland, 1997 'Solo Exhibition', Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway, 1997 'No Sense of Absolute Corruption', Gagosian Gallery, New York, 1996 'Still', White Cube, London, 1995 'Prix Eliette von Karajan 95', Max Gandolph-Bibliothek, Salzberg, Austria, 1995 'Damien Hirst', Gagosian Gallery, New York, 1995 'Pharmacy', Kukje Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, 1994 'Pharmacy', Dallas Museum, Dallas, USA, 1994 'A Bad Environment for White Monochrome Paintings', Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, USA, 1994 'A Good Environment for Colored Monochrome Paintings, DAAD Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 1994 'Currents 23', Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA, 1994 'Making Beautiful Drawings', Bruno Brunnet Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany, 1994 'Damien Hirst', Galerie Jablonka, Cologne, Germany, 1993 'Visual Candy', Regan Projects, Los Angeles, USA, 1993 'Pharmacy', Cohen Gallery, New York, 1992 'Where God's Now', Jay & Donatella Chiat, New York, 1992 'Mariianne, Hildegarde', Unfair/Jay Joplin, Cologne, Germany, 1992 'Damien Hirst: Third International Istanbul Biennial', British Council, Istanbul, Turkey, 1992 'Internal Affairs', ICA, London, 1991 'When Logic Dies', Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France, 1991 'In & Out of Love', Woodstock Street, London, 1991 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS '…On the sublime…' Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmš, Sweden, 1999 'A Portrait of Our times: An Introduction to the Logan Collection', San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA, 1998 'Wall Projects: Damien Hirst', Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA, 1998 'Fun se Si cle', Walsall Museum and Art Gallery, Wallsall, UK, 1998 'Pandaemonium: The London Festival of Moving Image', LEA, London, 1998 'Fifty Years of British Sculpture: Works from the Arts Council Collection', Lothbury Gallery, London, 1998 'Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Charles Ray', 11 Duke Street, London, 1998 'The Colony Room 50th Anniversary Art Exhibition', A22 Projects, London, 1998 'London Calling: Contemporary British Art from Italian Private Collections, Part II: The Eighties and Nineties', The British School at Rome/Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Italy, 1998 'Zone', Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, Italy, 1998 'Inner Eye: Contemporary Art from the Marc and Livia Straus Collection', Samuel P Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Giansville, USA, 1998 'Modern British Art', Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 1998 'Noir', Trienniale di Milano, Milan, Italy, 1998 'Veronica's Revenge (Lambert Art Collection, Geneva)', Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany, 1998 'Wild/Life, -or-, The Impossibility of Mistaking Nature for Culture', Weatherspoon Art Gallery, North Carolina, USA, 1998 'Dimensions Variable', British Council Touring Exhibition, 1997 'Sensation', Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997 'Sensation', Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, 1997 'Picture Britannica: Art from Britain', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, 1997 'Picture Britannica: Art from Britain', Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, 1997 'Picture Britannica: Art from Britain', Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand, 1997 'Turning Up #4', Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 1997 'Packaging Holiday', Hydra Workshops, Hydra, Greece, 1997 'Sunny Days/Critical Times: An Exhibition of Works from the Bohen Foundation's Collection', The Bohen Foundation, New York, 1997 'Veronica's Revenge: Oeuvres photographiques de la Lambert Art Collection', Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland, 1997 'Material Culture', Hayward Gallery, London, 1997 'A Ilha do Tesouro', Fundao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 1997 'The Lost ark', Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK, 1997 'Life/Live', Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, 1996 'Life/Live', Centro de Exposiçoes de Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal, 1996 'Zeit-Spiegel I', Städtisches Museum Schloß Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany, 1996 'Other Men's Flowers', Galerie Aurel Scheiber, Cologne, Germany, 1996 'Faustrecht der Freiheit (Volkmann Collection)', Kunstsammlung Gera, Berlin, Germany, 1996 'Faustrecht der Freiheit (Volkmann Collection)', Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen, Germany, 1996 'Chaos, Madness - Moods in Contemporary Art', Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, 1996 'Twentieth-century British Sculpture', Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, 1996 'Other Men's Flowers', Aurel Scheibler, Cologne, Germany, 1996 'Private View', The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, UK, 1996 'Happy End', Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany, 1996 'Faustrecht der Freiheit (Volkmann Collection)', Kunstsammlung Gera, Berlin, Germany, 1996 Meues Museum Weserburg, Bremen, Germany, 1996 'Do It', Raum Aktueller Kunst, Vienna, Austria, 1996 'Everything That's Interesting Is New: The Dakis Joannou Collection', Athens School of Fine Arts, The Factory, Athens, Greece, 1996 'Everything That's Interesting Is New: The Dakis Joannou Collection', Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1996 'Everything That's Interesting Is New: The Dakis Joannou Collection', Solomon R Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, 1996 'Works on Paper', Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 1996 'A Small Shifting Sphere of Serious Culture', ICA, London, 1996 (touring exhibition) 'Spellbound', Hayward Gallery, London, 1996 'British Art Show 4', Hayward Gallery, London, 1995 'British Art Show 4', Manchester, UK, 1995-96 'British Art Show 4', Edinburgh, UK, 1996 'British Art Show 4', Cardiff, UK, 1996 'Brilliant: Art from London', Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, 1995-96 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA, 1995 'New Art in Britain', Museum Sztuki, Poland, 1995 'Turner Prize Exhibition', Tate Gallery, London, 1995 'Laboratories', Galerie Art et Essai, University of Rennes, Brittany, France, 1995 'The Reflected Image', Museo Pecci, Prato, Italy, 1995 'Minky Manky', South London Gallery, London, 1995 'Signs and Wonders', Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland, 1995 'From Here', Waddington Galleries/Karsten Schubert, London, 1995 'Group Show', Bruno Brunnet Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 1995 'A Bonnie Situation: Truth and Fiction', Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany, 1995 'Drawing the Line', South Bank Center, London, 1995 'Drawing the Line', Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, UK, 1995 'Drawing the Line', Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, 1995 'Drawing the Line', Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, UK, 1995 'Drawing the Line', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995 'Cocido Y Crudo', Museo Natcional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, 1994 'Art Unlimited', Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, UK, 1994-95 'Art Unlimited', Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery, Leeds, UK, 1995 'Art Unlimited', Corner House, Manchester, UK, 1995 'Art Unlimited', South Bank Center, London, 1995 'Art Unlimited', Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, UK, 1995 'Art Unlimited', Brighton University Gallery, Brighton, UK, 1996 'From Beyond the Pale', Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 1994-95 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', Serpentine Gallery, London, 1994 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', Nordic Arts Center, Helsinki, Finland, 1994 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', Kunstverein, Hanover, Germany, 1994 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA, 1995 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away', Portalen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1995 Radiomarelli, S Antonino Di Susa, Turin, Italy, 1994 'Drawing on Sculpture', Cohen Gallery, New York, 1994 'Nature Morte', Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 1994 'Domestic Violence, Gio Marconi, Milan, Italy, 1994 'Not Self-Portrait', Karsten Schubert, London, U1994 'Virtual Reality', National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia, 1994 'A Wonderful Life', Lisson Gallery, London, 1993 'Displace', Cohen Gallery, New York, 1993 'Venice Biennal', Aperto Section, Venice, Italy, 1993 'Here and Now: Twenty-three Years of the Serpentine Gallery', Serpentine Gallery, London, 1993 'The Nightshade Family', Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 1993 'The 21st Century', Kunsthalle, Basel, Switzerland, 1993 'Turner Prize Exhibition', Tate Gallery, London, 1992 'Strange Developments', Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, 1992 'British Art', Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 1992 'Avantegarde & Kampagne', Stadtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany, 1992 'Group Show', Luis Campaña Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany, 1992 'Posthuman', Fondation Asher Edelman, Lausanne, France, 1992 'Posthuman', Museo D'Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 1992 'Posthuman', Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 1993 'London Portfolio', Karsten Schubert, London, 1992 Turkish Biennial, Turkey, 1992 'Made for Arolsen', Schloss Arolsen, Arolsen, Germany, 1992 'Young British Artists', Saatchi Collection, London, 1992 'Moltiplici/Cultura, Rome, Italy, 1992 'Under Thirty', Galerie Metropol, Vienna, Austria, 1992 'Damien Hirst', ICA, London, 1991 'Broken English', Serpentine Gallery, London, 1991 'Louder Than Words', Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 1991 'Gambler', Building One, London, 1990 'Modern Medicine', Building One, London, 1990 'New contemporaries', ICA, London, U1989 Third Eye Center, Glasgow, UK, 1989 'Freeze', Surrey Docks, London, 1988 Media: performance