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Shepard Fairey & Damien Hirst — Icon Pixel (with Pills)

Icon Pixel (with Pills)

2025

Icon Pixel (with Pills) is among the most conceptually loaded works in the Triple Trouble collection, fusing Shepard Fairey's graphic icon-making with Damien Hirst's obsessive pharmaceutical imagery and Invader's pixel tile aesthetic into a single, confrontational object. The incorporation of actual pills alongside ceramic tiles and wood directly references Hirst's celebrated spot paintings and pill cabinet works, in which pharmaceutical objects become both memento mori and commentary on society's medicated condition. Fairey's contribution grounds the work in his tradition of image-as-icon, the idea that certain figures and symbols acquire an almost religious cultural authority through repetition and stylization, which the pixelated tile surface then fragments and democratizes in Invader's 8-bit visual language. The combination of ceramic and pharmaceutical materials creates an uneasy tactile reality, the handmade warmth of the tile work interrupted by the clinical mass-production of pills, staging a collision between the human and the synthetic. Together, the three artists produce a work that interrogates how icons are constructed, consumed, and ultimately commodified in contemporary culture, with the pills serving as a wry, unsettling reminder of mortality beneath the surface of all image-worship.

Medium
Ceramic tiles and pills on wood
Dimensions

Notes

Triple collaboration: Shepard Fairey x Damien Hirst x Invader

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Shepard Fairey & Damien Hirst, Icon Pixel (with Pills), 2025

Icon Pixel (with Pills) is among the most conceptually loaded works in the Triple Trouble collection, fusing Shepard Fairey's graphic icon-making with Damien Hirst's obsessive pharmaceutical imagery and Invader's pixel tile aesthetic into a single, confrontational object. The incorporation of actual pills alongside ceramic tiles and wood directly references Hirst's celebrated spot paintings and pill cabinet works, in which pharmaceutical objects become both memento mori and commentary on society's medicated condition. Fairey's contribution grounds the work in his tradition of image-as-icon, the idea that certain figures and symbols acquire an almost religious cultural authority through repetition and stylization, which the pixelated tile surface then fragments and democratizes in Invader's 8-bit visual language. The combination of ceramic and pharmaceutical materials creates an uneasy tactile reality, the handmade warmth of the tile work interrupted by the clinical mass-production of pills, staging a collision between the human and the synthetic. Together, the three artists produce a work that interrogates how icons are constructed, consumed, and ultimately commodified in contemporary culture, with the pills serving as a wry, unsettling reminder of mortality beneath the surface of all image-worship.

Medium
Ceramic tiles and pills on wood
Dimensions
185 x 149.2 cm
Year
2025
Seen at
HENI, London, United Kingdom

Related themes

Mixed Media, Conceptual Art, American Contemporary, Wood Based, 2020s, Pharmaceutical Theme, Pop Art, Critical Mood, Colorful Palette, Tiles And Pills

More works by Shepard Fairey

Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Hamilton Selway Gallery