Shock and wow: Hirst and Gonzalez-Torres

Associated media

‘Candy’, a new exhibition at Blain/Southern’s Hanover Square gallery in London (16 October–30 November, 2013),  exclusively combines the work of two artists, Damien Hirst and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who use colour to wow and shock in this presentation of art and installation: it’s a sweet show with a hard centre.

Entering the spacious white walled gallery on the ground floor – light-filled through its vast windows on to the street – the eye is met with a breathtaking array of hot colour, a visual mix of candy-coloured paintings and candy installations. The ten wall paintings are by Hirst, the first time that artworks from his ‘Visual Candy’ series have been shown collectively; the floor-level installations are by Gonzalez-Torres.

Cuban-born Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–96), is noted for installations that use commercially available materials, from light bulbs to paper, clocks and sweets.  At Blain/Southern, his candy spill work, 'Untitled', 1992 (candies individually wrapped in variously coloured cellophane, in endless supply), is spread out in three formats: carefully piled in one corner, encircling a pillar, and laid out in a shimmering ‘carpet’ of colour under the windows, the layouts arranged by the gallery. The inventiveness of the work allows it to change shape depending on its location and the gallery curator’s vision. The array, and mountainous numbers of sweets invite the spectator to touch, to take and to consume the small, brightly wrapped candies (the displays are refilled each day by the gallery staff), making it a work of art that encourages participation. Gonzalez-Torres spoke about this form as a method of letting go, refusing to make a static form.

Complementing Gonzalez-Torres glittery installations, British-born Damien Hirst’s ‘Visual Candy’ series of paintings elate the visual senses in a display of sensational abstract colour forms. The smaller works, such as Happiness, 1993–4, Smile Smile, 1993–5, and Some Fun 1993, hold their own with the larger canvases such as Super Happy Happy Dabby, 1993.  But here the exuberant colours mask an unseen hard core; Hirst relates that the paintings depict medicinal pills, a visual free-form depiction of the psychological effects of mood-enhancing drugs. He stated ‘in every painting there is a subliminal sense of unease… the colours project so much joy it’s hard to feel it, but it’s there. The horror underlying everything’.

I didn’t feel the horror just the joy and I wanted to take Happy Fat Dappy Dappy, 1993 home, along with some candies, to keep the ‘high on art’ sensation going, but each spectator will have his/her own view of this combination of works by Hirst and Gonzalez-Torres. It is worth a visit to ‘Candy’ at Blain/Southern, to make your own mind up.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and an essay by Blain/Southern’s chief curator, Mario Codognato.

‘CANDY: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Damien Hirst’
Blain/Southern
4 Hanover Square
London W1S 1BP

16 October – 30 November 2013

Monday to Friday: 10.00 – 18.00
Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00

Report by Rosalind Ormiston