Forgotten Promises

With full-color plates of paintings and sculptures, this book was produced for "Damien Hirst: Forgotten Promises," the inaugural exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2011. It includes For Heaven's Sake (2008), a life-size human baby skull cast in platinum and covered in 8,128 pavé-set pink and white diamonds, as well as beautiful diamond cabinets in gold and silver. A group of paintings made in 2008-2009, including Age of Magnificence and Fading Magnificence, show real butterflies entombed in layers of shiny metallic paint. The new Butterfly Fact Paintings are painted in oil with painstaking attention to realistic detail. "Why else would you do it, when you could just get a photograph that looks identical?" Hirst has said. "But it's not the same thing, is it? A photograph is from a moment, a split second. Painting is about stopping to look at the world, considering it, and giving it more and more importance." 

The unique "flatbook" binding allows the book to open perfectly flat. There are four different dust jacket designs. An essay by curator Francesco Bonami, as well as an interview with Hirst conducted by art critic Karen Smith, are included. Text is published in both Chinese and English. 

This is the signed limited edition of this book.