The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris presents "Cherry Blossoms," Damien Hirst's first museum exhibition in France, running from Tuesday, July 6, 2021, to Sunday, January 2, 2022. The exhibition will feature approximately 30 paintings from his latest "Cherry Blossoms" series, and during the exhibition period, films shot with Hirst's cooperation, exploring his two studios, will be available to view online.

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England, in 1965. While studying at Goldsmiths College of Art in London, he organized the exhibition "Freeze" with peers in a derelict building along the Thames. He later became a representative figure among the artists collectively known as the "Young British Artists."

Hirst's creative practice spans sculpture, installation, painting, and drawing, exploring themes of life and death, excess, and ephemerality. In recent years, he has pursued painterly expression, depth, and color through his "Colour Space" series (2016), composed of variations on the infinite possibilities of color, and his "Veil Paintings" (2018), created by layering small amounts of paint to depict the shimmering of color across the canvas.

The culmination of this exploration is his latest work, "Cherry Blossoms." The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain's General Director Hervé Chandès and Hirst himself selected 30 paintings from this series of 107 canvases, which Hirst describes as "a reconsideration of the joy of painting that arises naturally."

Hirst says, "'Cherry Blossoms' is about beauty and life and death. It's an extreme work, and it's sort of a bit camp about it. It's Jackson Pollock with a twist of love, and it's decorative and it's from nature, and it's about how you process your desires and the things around you and turn them into something. And it's about the visual ephemerality of beauty and it's a tree that's blooming like mad, with a clear blue sky behind it. It's great fun to make the work, to get lost in color and paint in the studio. The works are flamboyant and messy and ephemeral and they speak to my leaving minimalism and my idea of the imaginary mechanical painter, and it's very exciting for me."

During the exhibition period, two films shot with Hirst's cooperation will be released online. A medium-length film, shot over several months, offers a glimpse into the atmosphere of his studio along the Thames. Another film, shot in 360 degrees, allows viewers to tour a different studio with guidance from Hirst himself.