"New Religion" is Damien Hirst's first large scale exhibition visiting Bulgaria. It will be hosted by the National Art Gallery of Bulgaria in partnership with the British Council, the Modern Art Gallery Sofia and the Paul Stolper Gallery London.
“New Religion” offers the wider public the opportunity to come into contact with the work of an artist who continues to provoke passionate reactions. The exhibition is curated by Artemis Potamianou and addresses themes which run throughout his artistic practice and gives us an insight into his way of working.
Simultaneous displays of sculptures, constructions and paintings complete the installation which creates the sense of a chapel: a cross ornamented with pills, which like other precious stones assert their value for human life and prosperity; a silver heart pierced by razors and needles and wrapped in barbed wire; a child’s skull which, as with The Skull Beneath the Skin, hints at Hirst’s later work For the Love of God; and a giant pill in marble representing the holy communion, comprise an open list of questions posed by the artist in relation to science - and its role as a ‘new religion’ .
The exhibition, or part of it, has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava in Venice and the Rogaland Museum in Stavanger, Norway. www.britishcouncil.org
