Damien Hirst. The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, from Gagosian Gallery website, 28 January 2012. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

From the very beginning, Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, was always going to be the target of much contempt. An embodiment of savvy self-promotion, Damien Hirst has become the world’s richest living artist, and with that, a scapegoat for the pompous market and inflated celebrity status representing all that is wrong with contemporary art today. This latest publicity stunt—a gargantuan worldwide retrospective of spot paintings—is an exhibition founded in pure megalomania: big gallery, big artist, and even bigger personalities. As with the ostentatious two-day auction held at Sotheby’s in 2008 at the height of the economic crisis, Hirst simply doesn’t do modest. And with eleven galleries worldwide, neither does Gagosian. A few weeks ago, Daily Serving writer Danielle Sommer offered up two challenges: the first to find something new to say about the work, and the second, to pick a side. I love a good challenge.

First things first: I despise the premise of the show. But I do respect the audacity it takes to try to pull something like this off. This was never the show intended to ignite respect and admiration for Hirst—that show is slated to open at Tate Modern this spring. The Complete Spot Paintings instead feels more like a scientific experiment, one of Hirst’s macabre vitrine works spun out into real-life testing grounds, intended to divide the camps into those who follow and those who resist.

For a few moments, let’s try and separate the works from the madness that surrounds them.

Damien Hirst. Levorphanol, 1995; household gloss on canvas. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates.

I am willing to admit that I have always had a soft spot for these paintings. As a wide-eyed student, before learning about Hirst and his tyrannical rule over British contemporary art, I found myself lusting after a candy-colored work in New York, instantly hooked by its simplicity and destabilising aesthetics. On a canvas of undulating colour with nowhere for the eyes to rest, I found the spots both agitating and enlivening. Dabbling in pharmacology at the time, I was determined to make sense of the work by doing what humans do best—comparing it to that which I already knew well. My inherent drive to find meaning in chaos lost out in the end—in this case, the art didn’t have anything groundbreaking to say about science, nor science about the art. The relationship between the colors, the arrangement, and the title was simply one of randomness and chance. It was a matter of order being imposed upon disorder—a fundamental truism of both science and art.

The spot paintings are nothing more than color, calculations, sheer surface, and mass production—Hirst’s dissociative attempt at being more like a scientist, in the way that Andy Warhol wanted to be more like a machine. The paintings stand alone as visually intriguing and brutally honest; they do not purport to have any answers or be something they are not. Hirst is not trying to save contemporary art any more than the pharmaceutical companies are trying to cure cancer—it doesn’t suit either of their ends.

The Compete Spot Paintings, as a public spectacle, is positively cringe-worthy. I believe, however, that the paintings, as paintings, are quite good. Yes, perhaps it is a bit of nostalgia that kicks in, but there is something about sitting in front of the work that I still find invigorating.

I, for one, am quite happy to be seeing spots.

Damien Hirst, "Isonicotinic Acid Ethyl Ester," 2010–11. Household gloss on canvas, 99 x 147 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

When Lady Macbeth said “Out, damn’d spot!” she was referring to stains of blood, not brightly-colored enamel paint, but I’m sure there are more than a few art critics out there who echo her thought this month. The reason? What to make of “Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011”, now on view at eleven Gagosian galleries worldwide.

The spots at Gagosian LA range from the size of a ladybug to the size of a car door, and the canvases stay proportional, meaning that huge spots live on huge canvases, and vice versa.  The enamel colors are glossy and bright and yet flat, to such an extent that at the opening, I had several conversations that followed the ‘why spend your time laboring over what a computer can do’ track.

Damien Hirst, "Cefaclor," 2009. Household gloss on canvas, 21 1/8 x 16 3/8 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Perhaps the most unique perspective came from an art consultant, who professed his love for one painting in particular—a smaller piece in the second room that had actually been painted by Hirst (Hirst turned the labor of painting the spots over to his assistants in 1993). The spots on this canvas are slightly less uniform, the paint just a bit more uneven, and I swear you can see holes where the point of the compass bit in.

Over 300 paintings – about a quarter of the entire series – will hang from Gagosian walls in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Hong Kong for the next thirty-or-so days. Those who plan to visit all the galleries can register for “The Complete Spot Challenge”. Present yourself and your photo ID at all eleven Gagosians while the paintings are still up, and receive a limited-edition spot print, “dedicated personally to you.” One nice touch: the print has not yet been created, so it really will be personalized for the winner.  One winner equals one print.  Ten winners equals ten prints.

Damien Hirst, "Betulin," 2005. Household gloss on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

There are also two unmentioned challenges here. First, find something new to say about a series of repeated dots, and then, second, pick a side. The reviews vary, from “passé” to something along the lines of ‘enjoyable after you’ve moved past your initial reluctance’. To side with Hirst and Gagosian means you are pro-spectacle and (perhaps) dragging out the dying gasp of an over-inflated, lumbering beast of an art market. The other side is best represented by Christopher Knight at the Los Angeles Times, who wrote that it’s picture of the “new world order — abstract, interchangeable portraits of post-millennial trade.” The viewpoint I like best, however, comes from Blake Gopnik, at The Daily Beast, who insists that the eleven-gallery exhibition is actually the largest painting ever made, spread out across the globe like, well, a series of spots across a canvas.

Do with that what you will.

Kandor 10 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #34 and Kandor 12 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #35, installation view. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

In its original graphic incarnation, Kandor is noted as the fictional capital city of Superman’s native planet, Krypton. By the swift and conniving hands of the villainous Brainiac, the city was taken hostage and miniaturized for purposes not entirely sensible or mildly coherent – but not without valorous retrieval by our hero. Despite Superman’s Samaritan ways, the omnipresent plague of a haunting past hinders him from true emotional and psychological liberation – not to mention, visible underpants. For Kelley, the conceptual appeal lies in Kandor’s embodiment of an alienating victim culture for our protagonist: the notion of a burdensome present dictated by a labyrinthine past. Kelley’s unorthodox fusion of fragmented narrative, medium and sensory immersion seem nonsensical and queer at first encounter, yet the further we delve into his sensational rabbit hole, the closer we come to the truly bizarre fidelity of the human condition. Kelley confronts our latent attitudes and popular convictions relating to sexuality, socioeconomics, education and history with jocular finesse and – well – candor.

Kandor 10 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #34 and Kandor 12 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #35, installation view. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Like glowing orbs, a handful of Kandor sculptures pepper the multiple galleries within the darkened Gagosian megaplex. The dwarfed cities encased beneath colorful bell jars appear relic-like, yet also profane at times – their jutting skyscrapers evoking a curiosity born of both estrangement and familiarity. The two primary microcosms – Kandor 10 and Kandor 12 – bear oversized tubes that snake into tanks of (presumably) atmosphere, per the accuracy of the comic book reference. Each is situated within environmental installations that embellish upon two distinct anecdotes central to the exhibition: the carnal Moroccan harem featured in EAPR #34, and the bleak sooty chamber that appears in EAPR #35. In merging his previously autonomous Kandor and EAPR projects, Kelley suggests an innate relationship between our own respective microcosmic realities and subsequent conditional behavior.

Mike Kelley, video production still from Extracurricular Projective Reconstruction #34, 2010. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and Kelley Studio.

By way of illustration, Kelley’s EAPR #34 videos largely examine the lascivious conduct of society’s upper echelon when handed unrestricted power and entitlement. Directed in the style of a maladroit stage play, EAPR #34 shifts between a piggish male King belittling his covetous female harem and a group of scornful Queens admonishing a male servant. In both scenarios, the authoritarian’s disposition to abuse of influence and insatiable gluttony bespeaks a cyclical global history of flawed paradigm and deep-rooted desire for accumulation. Beside the video installation, Kandor 10 is nestled within a life-size stony grotto reminiscent of EAPR #34’s exotic Moroccan setting, as if displaying the incubator in which these voracious human mannerisms were nurtured. When the Kandor’s luminous mini-cityscape appears more familiar than it does foreign, one can only muse on how fictitiously reconstructive Kelley’s staged milieu really is.

Kandor 12 A (green screen), 2010. Tinted Urethane resin, steel, blown glass with water-based resin coating wood, enamel paint, silicone rubber, acrylic paint, lighting fixture and Lenticular 12. 126 x 202 x 276 inches overall (320 x 513.1 x 701 cm). Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Conversely, EAPR #35 jettisons us into a place of somber isolation and denial. Grimy clownish gnomes aimlessly shuffle around a murky cell, their void gazes searching for an ambiguous cue. Homogeneous in tired costume and ashen faces, the destitute prisoners amble in silent futility – resigned to the dim prospects of their ordained condition.

Video production still from Extracurricular Projective Reconstruction #35, 2010. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and Kelley Studio.

The analogous Kandor 12 shares an equally inauspicious aesthetic; the cloudy brown bottle houses a municipality more reminiscent of chess pieces than modern skyscrapers – as if underlining the inmates’ loss of an unassailable game. The sparse backdrop of the gnomes’ cellar intimates a societal tradition of abhorrent secrecy and muted abuse of the weak, a ritualistic convention of marginalizing the vulnerable in order to preserve the greater hierarchy. As if acting as the underbelly to the rapacious actuality in EAPR #34, the vignette captured in EAPR #35 exposes the ensuing trauma that occurs in the wings as we strive to fulfill our socially performative roles – most of which remain immutably out of reach.

Kandor 12 A (green screen), 2010. Tinted Urethane resin, steel, blown glass with water-based resin coating wood, enamel paint, silicone rubber, acrylic paint, lighting fixture and Lenticular 12. 126 x 202 x 276 inches overall (320 x 513.1 x 701 cm). Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

In fact, Kelley’s inclusion of the sets from the EAPR #34 and EAPR #35 videos in this exhibition make us feel but a mere player in one hell of a bewildering production. In tandem with his Kandors, the sets feel like an abstract extension of a transient ecology, a faux mise en scène demonstration of how we enact our own mortality. Do we unconsciously fall victim to institutional constructs in our quest for repute and satisfaction, acting a character merely to clinch our chances of eminence? Or do we find ourselves waiting in the wings for a cue – a protagonist – that may never come?

Kandor 10 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #34 and Kandor 12 / Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #35, installation view. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

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