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Damien Hirst — Hazardous Material
Damien Hirst

Hazardous Material

2014

Hazardous Material, predating the Triple Trouble collaboration by over a decade, functions as a key historical anchor within the collection, revealing the long gestation of Hirst's interest in institutional systems of danger, control, and biological anxiety. The use of medical waste and household gloss paint on canvas is characteristic of Hirst's career-long strategy of importing materials from outside the art world — from formaldehyde to pill cabinets — to interrogate medicine, mortality, and the power structures that govern bodies. Household gloss, a banal and domestic material, placed alongside clinical medical waste, creates a dissonant collision between the private home and the sterile hospital, two environments defined by vulnerability and care. The title operates with the bureaucratic bluntness of a warning label, stripping away aesthetic pretense in favor of institutional language — a gesture consistent with Hirst's broader critique of how systems classify, contain, and sanitize our encounter with death and disease. Seen within Triple Trouble, this 2014 work underscores how Hirst's practice has always contained the seeds of collaboration with transgressive, boundary-pushing artists, making his partnership with Invader and Fairey feel like a natural culmination rather than an unlikely convergence.

Medium
Medical waste and household gloss on canvas
Dimensions

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About this work

Damien Hirst, Hazardous Material, 2014

Hazardous Material, predating the Triple Trouble collaboration by over a decade, functions as a key historical anchor within the collection, revealing the long gestation of Hirst's interest in institutional systems of danger, control, and biological anxiety. The use of medical waste and household gloss paint on canvas is characteristic of Hirst's career-long strategy of importing materials from outside the art world — from formaldehyde to pill cabinets — to interrogate medicine, mortality, and the power structures that govern bodies. Household gloss, a banal and domestic material, placed alongside clinical medical waste, creates a dissonant collision between the private home and the sterile hospital, two environments defined by vulnerability and care. The title operates with the bureaucratic bluntness of a warning label, stripping away aesthetic pretense in favor of institutional language — a gesture consistent with Hirst's broader critique of how systems classify, contain, and sanitize our encounter with death and disease. Seen within Triple Trouble, this 2014 work underscores how Hirst's practice has always contained the seeds of collaboration with transgressive, boundary-pushing artists, making his partnership with Invader and Fairey feel like a natural culmination rather than an unlikely convergence.

Medium
Medical waste and household gloss on canvas
Dimensions
244 x 366 cm
Year
2014
Seen at
HENI, London, United Kingdom

Related themes

Mixed Media, Conceptual Art, 2010s, Domestic, Social Commentary, Medical Waste, Provocative, Clinical Aesthetic, British Contemporary, Hazardous Materials

More works by Damien Hirst

Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Sarah Greenspan, Hamilton Selway Gallery, Brittany Laques