Damien Hirst Relics documentary - English

strange creature has been spotted in Doha Qatar great white shark navigating its way through the city's streets startling sight it's an image of an artwork featured in an equally astonishing exhibition at the Owlery white gallery near the Museum of Islamic art alongside this piece some of the most famous artworks in the world I think in this retrospective you have at least a handful of works that they are cornerstone of art history and particularly of the history of contemporary art of the last 20 years all these works by one of the world's most successful and groundbreaking living artists this works it's incredibly powerful you know here was somebody who did something completely different he is one of the artists currently work that we can see without any fear of contradiction we will have a major place in the art history of our particular area Dameon hostile the new damien hirst exhibition in doha is his first solo show in the Middle East it showcases the career of an artist who has transformed the nature of contemporary art it's his largest ever retrospective exhibiting 27 years of work to a new audience de minuit about as a now are the left and not original finale I do tell the father of any American camera would you definitely go ha we are always nice and I forget about a cyber what I said to her either Jimmy I'd I'm gonna hope that people are gonna be excited by it is it are actually trying to make workers international and this you know cross-cultural so I think it's a good test of that lots of wow I would Jamila Raya of submit and fan so the project include other tena world to move an original banal value Albatros awawa influenza milliwatt Cobra feel defeated McCallum warhead insecticide Nathaniel's of metal can camera balloon go of Africa why our Jamil were trophy figure with a pair were shot if a couple and ahead I will meet Alaska LEDs rather not - I'm chafing fun when you feel each other with here Kalam with tough Kea were adapted in Catherine Papa and for Nia Damian personally jadelle will tough here why the shame 100m touch and not a tough here negative cable laachraoui Elvis Lamia and at the farm at FK Bolivia Timmy Amato know this show is creating dialogue and I think that is the most crucial thing to create dialogue and to take away the fear of the amount nothing every exhibition you I do do is always special every aspect of it will be special amusing a whole new environment new country I've done 25 years of kind of you know crazy stuff and lots of different ideas and so I think it is a good you know it's a good feels comfortable to look back and I'm enjoying it really the staging of this major retrospective has involved months of complex preparation including the amassing of this enormous 6.8 meter long basking shark in 60,000 litres of formaldehyde solution for over two months this breathtaking new piece and others from around the globe have been installed at the ALRI WAC gallery it's one of the biggest shows we've done that be the biggest museum retrospective show it's over 90 works which over the six and a half weeks will install them we have seen 30 and 40 technicians on site along with six conservatives as well we're working together to bring the show make it happen is this in at the biggest show that he's done so far we've got obviously I didn't leave a lot more artworks removing them you know six and a half thousand miles around the world so instead of your shipping and trucking things across the country we've used a lease huge c-17 military transport planes one day we received a phone call from general Ali from the emiri air force to see if they could help in the organization of of their show and they have a wonderful plane called a c-17 if many other and and we were able to use them the works in this show tell the story of damien hirst remarkable artistic career his newest were created especially for this exhibition is Leviathan the giant basking shark now on display in Doha for the first time it's the latest and largest in the series of sharp pieces that made Hirst famous I got a phone call few years back from the Natural History Museum and they said we've just been given a huge basking shark he's been washed up on a beach dead somewhere in calm long will you store it for us I said yeah because I had the studio big enough and I was working with them on preservation anyway and I looked after it for him from a few months and then they call them just a little got no space food you want to keep it silent yeah and then thought I'll do live I'll make a piece called Leviathan but I've been working on it since then really I'd read that book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes I think he says that life is solitary poor nasty brutish and short and that's his view of the world Leviathan is about the unknown something murky and dark and deep from the bottom of the sea from an unknown area inside your mind even or you know something an unknowable or difficult to fathom from fathoms deep the violin is scary because is a beast is something that you do hear about in the stories you don't think something like that exists whoever will see it it will find it not just spectacular then we find it really almost moving Hurst's iconic shark series began over 20 years ago with a work called the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living there's only one idea was that one from Jaws I mean I was keeping up see jaws was terrifying but great and I like horror films are like being scared a long time ago I saw Richard Serra sculpture at the Saatchi Gallery and I remember it was two curved pieces of melon I remember looking at it thinking you know so what and then I walked through the middle of it as I got halfway through I got physically frightened they could fall on me he don't know how he's held up he kind of run out the other side and sort of passed I thought wow that's a great reaction to a sculpture to get physical reaction from it and so you know the shark idea first came from that I just thought you know what would be amazing is to get a shark and a gallery big enough to eat you in a volume of liquid that makes you feel a little bit like you do if you were in the sea with it you're confronted immediately by this violent creature I mean no matter how much animal rights activists want to tell me that the shark is a nice creature I'm sorry it isn't it's actually terrifying and so there is fear automatically you are confronted with fear damien hirst sharks have made an enormous impact on the popular imagination above all because they push at the boundaries of what art is like the natural history series to which they belong described by Damien as a zoo of dead animals in formaldehyde to promote the exhibition and to encourage debate about Damien Hirst art the Qatar museums authority has taken the museum experience into the everyday world merhaba be entire ocean Cuccia had a tool mr. boffin Ian our CEO mean our mail in Finland Damien Hirst my washer buttons are headed heather hamel ledee kevinturtle Kenya little be renowned what you badass among social behavior muscles or homework Aloha if we have did the madmen and Arabic well hello I shall enough of a son Bharat Belgium had a little arm yes a clue he if necessary cute little blue is cute the museum has also invited local school and university students to our work to experience the exhibition firsthand among the works producing the strongest reactions is one of Damien Hirst's earliest pieces and the first artwork to secure his place in art history a thousand years a glass cabinet divided into containing hundreds of flies on one side flies are born on the other they feed on a decaying cow's head before being killed by an electric insect atutor when I was at a funny point in my life when I made a thousand years and I wanted to make something that was important in you know in a big way now I've just had this idea of of showing a whole life cycle in a box and then I decided it would be flies with a fly killer and then by one thorn in everything - you know the randomness of the living dying breeding the environment having all in a box with a thousand years there's life happening right in front of you it's not pretty that's for sure but again it provokes dude it gets you to start thinking when I was taught to you know to come from things you can't avoid and that's one of those things so I don't think I don't think any eyes can make out without dealing with death you can see many things in a thousand year you can see humanity seen from far away moving around aimlessly humanities attracted or something that lights what it can be money can be fame can be can be success and then you know sometimes touch it and we die that's the most traditional subject in art the lifecycle life and death and here was a young artist barely 20 who understood many of the ground themes of art history and wanted to try and confront them and represent them and in his own way it was an amazing work this piece like many others in the show demonstrates Damien Hirst's status as one of the world's leading conceptual artists inspired by a form of expression that engages the mind as much as the eye conceptual art says that the art lies in the mind of the view and not in the object itself and that's all a conceptual art saying it's not it's nothing different I mean that you know conceptual art is just art that's not complicated I don't think and it's a visual language you know if you've got a beach ball floating on a jet of air and you go wow what is this to understand and then if you want to take up step further and go well suppose life's like that then you go cool if you don't have to go to that second level on the third level other fall it doesn't matter where you work you just go yeah I like it why can I like the colors in it and how does it work it looks like magic your last grain two floating balls Express very well the philosophy of gaming one is a colorful ball that is it playful object can make you happy and the other one is to pain create a kind of tension in looking at it because you always expect the ball to fall on the knife and it's float that is so simple and it contains exactly what our life is about with right always to be playful and happy but if we know that our happiness our pleasure our beauty can always collapse often he uses the whole idea of the found object his idea was how do you make art more real if photography can reproduce mechanically something where is it left for the painter or scope to the go well actually let's try and make it more real than than photography and the easy way of doing that is let's have the real thing let's try and make art as close to life as possible let's blur those distinctions I wanted things to be realizing what paintings and in what light boxes and I didn't want you know a lot of my friends were doing that but I wanted reality I wanted you to be forced to look at reality I've always thought when you go into an art gallery that the great reaction is Wow I think you get that a lot in like the Natural History Museum a lot more sadly than you do in contemporary art galleries and so I've always just you know what I've been looking for ways to do things wrong so you just take your steel I just take that in betweens we're not going to take that and prints on an art gallery perhaps Damian's most audacious attempt to take from life and put it in a gallery is this work pharmacy I made pharmacy in New York when I've done the medicine cabinets we put them on the wall and then you go around what you know why Zion here isn't that mean the chemist and then I thought I'd do a show where you actually think you're in the wrong gallery see you're not in the gummy because when you opened the elevator it came up he came out into the pharmacy so there's like people kept coming in and getting back out in the lift and leaving and coming back and gaining and leaving I just made the whole gallery into a pharmacy but this installation was about much more than expanding the definition of art it's an exploration of belief systems with faith or replace and medicine Pharmaceuticals are religious in a moment is the promise of immortality isn't it the hope of immortality even local art is not really on the cards perhaps as the visual power of the pharmacy that makes us believe it's an environment steeped in minimalism an aesthetic defined by use of cool clean geometric forms and bold colors there's a reason why the pharmaceutical companies use minimalism to sellers highly priced plant extracts and it's because they can trick us into believing that we actually can of as peace of immortality you're not going to be buying cancer medicines if she's got big stars all I'm saying - for the price of one 75% off she's not going to believe it so it's perfect clinical molded shapes and colors that just says trust us we're going to make your body last forever and you go yeah cool I love the packet those Damian's belief in the inherent beauty and seductive power of minimalism characterized as much of his art perhaps most clearly in his trademarks pot paintings which began in 1986 and subsequently evolved into an endless series some of the latest are on displayed for the first time in Doha I mean I just always loved color I mean I think the sport paintings you know they always look happy and they're you can't help desiring them they look good I think art should always be beautiful absolutely totally think art needs to be beautiful it annoys me when things are ugly well I guess have you the iana boat the effort and the time is put into each of the works is sort of endless about that right then we're taking up a little bit down it's all about the finished product and getting to make a look a million dollars and look absolutely perfect at the end of the day perhaps the most delicate works to be installed and without question the most valuable our two skulls covered in a combined total of sixteen thousand seven hundred and twenty nine diamonds entitled for the love of God and for heaven's sake these skulls are being exhibited together for the first time by 2007 when the first skull was completed Damien had become one of the world's most successful and wealthiest artists when I had huge about Marie Curie later thought I've gotta make something huge that needs to huge amounts of money to make it and those I was surrounded by lots of money and I think is an artist you make art from what's around you and you know there was money you know because the whole you know look a lot of rich people had a lot of spare cash in their spending on art so I used that to make the diamond school and for the love of God Damien returns to his fascination with the central reality of all our lives our mortality the first goal was made just you know thinking about what's the maximum amount of wealth you can throw at death I think it's decorative and decorative in arts considered a criticism really isn't it but then when it comes to dealing with death this is that all you can do is decorate clearly in the diamond scale 8601 flawless diamonds is a statement about man's flawed aspirations of values systems that we put on materials the whole exchange idea that's therein in any market including the art market it's almost insulting to mankind because it's telling you that this is what you're after today is it's vanity it's sad to say but in many respects it's reality I think it's almost finished it and then I realized that white diamonds outlive rarest rarer and far more valuable are the pink diamonds which Damien used to create his next skull that of a baby cast in platinum I think it's got the same amount of diamonds practically as the other skull bridge and I love the idea of that something could be even more valuable but smaller but they're combined price tag of a hundred and twenty million dollars has led to concerns that money is overwhelming but all that talk doesn't take away from the work for something to be ah he's got to be about more than money because you can't take it with you it's got to be another reason for living he's got to be no more to life than that people fear that ultimately that maybe money is more important than art but from an artist point of view you know that's never really a fear this piece is it's art history and the great thing about the great work of art everybody has an opinion I'm in mixed feelings I always think is really good you need a bit of that you know cuz you think it's you know people are you know for the discussion it means it's got energy if everybody loves that he's probably was a nice wood to think maybe I've done something wrong in the fortnight after the opening alone Damien Hirst's relics received over 10,000 visitors very much one model what shakeela have been Sevigny technique it's gonna run go to hell Akhtar shame a Turkish man in it flies Elizabeth monkey Lane needs a battery of telev and shuttle at the Bible Kabir Michelle Papa Yaya Silva karma in Rome Kiku mosaic doctor like a Nana hope doctor minutes away safely Kinetico GD they did then business Belinelli had come but we'll say della FEMA Jonathan Jonathan figurin on ma that Eva everybody dallart on it Miette - bottom elephant nearly Hamburg area it's a cotton Mogu Davina Adela Real Madrid on father ha tamesha from 34 lemons I mean philosophically Islam we don't even have any caliber and numa to level Medeiros l4r from higher net man whom she loca I don't you valid furcula been tripping for a short [ __ ] element it will get married for a short looks gray I love it these best show overdone huh you know who everybody looks up but define people looks like it

Channel: ALRIWAQ DOHA

Views: 173,703

Keywords: Damien Hirst (Visual Artist), Documentary, Culture, Qatar (Country), Doha (City/Town/Village), Relics, Art (Collection Category), Artist (Job Title), Exhibition Place (Building Complex), QMA, ALRIWAQDOHA

Id: DvdqtA85zTA

Length: 26min 3sec (1563 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2014