Damien Hirst: Schizophrenogenesis Limited Edition Book Launch

Predominantly based upon the minimalist aesthetic of the medicinal pill, the works in this series were first shown at Paul Stolper Gallery in October 2014 and act as a continuation of Hirst’s life-long investigation into our almost-spiritual relationship with the rigours of science and the pharmaceutical industry.

The book includes all works in this series including ‘The Cure’; thirty silkscreen prints, each depicting a two-colour pill set against vibrant backgrounds of pop-candy colours. Also the series of corresponding sculptural works; fourteen hugely enlarged resin pills, each measuring thirty centimetres long, as well as ten smaller pills, rendered in an array of seductive, immaculate colours. Sculptures of medicine bottles, pharmaceutical boxes, ampoules, syringes, a scalpel, and drug packaging that all play with concepts of scale – the tallest measuring nearly one and a half metres. The editions continue Hirst's exploration of contemporary belief systems; religion, love, art and medicine.

Hirst explains: “Pills are a brilliant little form, better than any minimalist art. They’re all designed to make you buy them… they come out of flowers, plants, things from the ground, and they make you feel good, you know, to just have a pill, to feel beauty.”