Damien Hirst

Crisply executed on a grand scale in limited hues of black, white and shades of grey, Hypovase Prazosin Hydrochloride is an exceptional early example from Damien Hirst's celebrated Spot series, The Pharmaceutical Paintings.  Painted in 1992, the work is one of only nine paintings which together make the sub-series Deuterated Compounds, each work unique in its composition of colours from a severely reduced chromatic scale.  The work displays Hirst's strict systematic methodology: he said of the Spot series, "I started them as an endless series like a sculptural idea of a painter (myself). A scientific approach to painting in a similar way to the drug companies' scientific approach to life...  In the spot paintings the grid-like structure creates the beginning of a system.  On each painting no two colours are the same.  This ends the system; it's a simple system." (Damien Hirst and Robert Violette, Ed., I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London 1997, pp. 245-246)  In Hypovase Prazosin Hydrochloride Hirst's 'simple system' is elegantly employed in a work which deliberately denies colour harmony while simultaneously seducing the viewer with its mesmerizing regularity and pared-down simplicity.