As part of its continuing wall projects series, the MCA will present two versions of a work by British artist Damien Hirst. One of the most celebrated and notorious artists of the past decade, Hirst is best known for his large sculptures of dead animals encased in formaldehyde-filled vitrines. Pharmaceutic Wall Painting, Five Blacks (1993), two editions of which will be painted directly on the MCA’s lobby walls, is one of Hirst’s “spot paintings” and consists of a structured grouping of 150 arbitrarily colored dots of the same size. Begun in 1988, Hirst’s series of spot paintings represents a way for the artist to achieve a maximal or theatrical effect using simple forms and means. Hirst plays with seemingly conflicting systems of rules and randomness, and though the paintings may have a playful side to them, Hirst has named them after stimulants or narcotics. One of Hirst’s spot canvases, titled Ammonium Biborate (1993), was shown at the MCA in 1995 as part of the traveling Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away . . . exhibition, which he co-organized. Hirst has exhibited his work worldwide and was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 1995. He lives and works in London.

This wall project is coordinated by MCA Associate Curator Staci Boris and is part of a series of projects that has included works by Uta Barth, Byron Kim, Gary Simmons, and Sophie Tottie.