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Shepard Fairey & Damien Hirst — What is Above

What is Above

2025

What is Above brings together the philosophical provocations of Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst in a materially arresting work built from PVC tiles and pills on painted paper, a combination that immediately evokes both the clinical and the spiritual. Pills are among Hirst's most loaded symbols — shorthand for humanity's medicated relationship with mortality, hope, and control — while Fairey's graphic, propagandist sensibility reframes them as objects of social and political power rather than purely personal vulnerability. The title, What is Above, gestures toward the Hermetic axiom 'as above, so below,' suggesting a mirrored correspondence between heavenly ideals and earthly pharmaceutical reality, asking whether salvation has been quietly outsourced to the medicine cabinet. Fairey's use of PVC tiles introduces a hard, industrialised texture that echoes both Invader's mosaic language and the sterile grids of pharmaceutical packaging, threading the collaboration's visual dialogue tightly. Together, the materials create a work that is simultaneously a devotional object and a critique of consumer faith in science and authority.

Medium
PVC tiles and pills on painted paper
Dimensions

Notes

Triple collaboration: Shepard Fairey x Damien Hirst x Invader

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Shepard Fairey & Damien Hirst, What is Above, 2025

What is Above brings together the philosophical provocations of Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst in a materially arresting work built from PVC tiles and pills on painted paper, a combination that immediately evokes both the clinical and the spiritual. Pills are among Hirst's most loaded symbols — shorthand for humanity's medicated relationship with mortality, hope, and control — while Fairey's graphic, propagandist sensibility reframes them as objects of social and political power rather than purely personal vulnerability. The title, What is Above, gestures toward the Hermetic axiom 'as above, so below,' suggesting a mirrored correspondence between heavenly ideals and earthly pharmaceutical reality, asking whether salvation has been quietly outsourced to the medicine cabinet. Fairey's use of PVC tiles introduces a hard, industrialised texture that echoes both Invader's mosaic language and the sterile grids of pharmaceutical packaging, threading the collaboration's visual dialogue tightly. Together, the materials create a work that is simultaneously a devotional object and a critique of consumer faith in science and authority.

Medium
PVC tiles and pills on painted paper
Dimensions
152 x 111 cm
Year
2025
Seen at
HENI, London, United Kingdom

Related themes

Contemplative Mood, Minimalist, Text-Based, Mixed Media, Pharmaceutical, Introspective, Philosophical, Modern, Contemporary Art, Commercial Materials

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Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Hamilton Selway Gallery