Michael Joo and Damien Hirst: "Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?" Exhibition Recap

Other Criteria provides us with images of the opening of Damien Hirst and Michael Joo’s “Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?”, which recently opened in Berlin. The joint exhibition marked a unique collaboration between both creatives, who first met in Cologne in 1991. Features included new, especially conceived sculptures and installations, as well as seminal paintings and sculptures. “Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?” runs through August 14th, 2010.

HAUNCH OF VENISON
Heidestrasse 46
10557 Berlin
Germany

Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? is a unique collaboration between the two artists, who met in Cologne in 1991 and have remained close friends since that time. Engaged in a continuous, twenty-year discourse about their individual artistic practices, this marks the first time Joo and Hirst have worked together to realise a full-scale joint exhibition. Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? will feature new, especially conceived sculptures and installations, as well as seminal paintings and sculptures from Joo and Hirst.

Since gaining international attention after showing in the exhibition Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995, Joo has employed a highly personal language in the creation of his art to express ideas about identity, nature and the body. In key works like Improved Rack (Elk #18) (2010), a wall-mounted sculpture of elk antlers Joo plays on the traditional presentation of the hunter’s trophy by cutting the antlers into segments and extending them with metal rods. Other major works are a painted pink, bronze life-size sculpture of a zebra, Doppelganger (Pink Rocinante) (2009) and a new group of colorful paintingsof quartz crystals on shaped aluminum panels. Joo will also premier a sculptural homage to Martin Kippenberger involving a framework of ice and prehistoric Irish Elk antlers.

In dialogue with Joo’s works, Hirst brings together signature sculptures and paintings for which he has become known. Included in the exhibition are The Incredible Journey (2008), a zebra suspended in formaldehyde in a whitepainted steel tank and The Black Sheep with Golden Horns (divided) (2009),another major formaldehyde work shown here for the first time. Also on view are Har Megiddo (2008), a monumental circular fly painting as well as The Dark Continent (2010), a stainless steel medicine cabinet stacked with black pills, behind glass.