The shark tank - The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living - seems intended to provoke fear and awe, but the shark looked a bit done in. Its skin was wrinkled the way skin wrinkles when it has been in the bath too long. When I stared at the dead eyes of the shark, though, I could get a slight sense of discomfort.
The exhibition was set out like a factory, or like an amusement park. Many of the pieces seemed unconnected with one another. One or two very simple ideas did make a big impact. For example, a giant circular ashtray filled with cigarette butts, called The Acquired Inability to Escape. The stink of cigarettes and the scale of the piece gave me a feel for the nature of the addiction.
Another room was laid out like a pharmacy with a counter, with a coffee cup on the counter. Normal items on the shelves, a clinical feel to the room. This, by the way, was the second reminder, for me, of another exhibition - that of Jeremy Deller at the Hayward Gallery...in his exhibition was a giant cup of tea (instead of an ash tray) and a full-size sixties cafe (instead of a pharmacy). On the counter were big glass vases filled with coloured liquids that were meant to symbolise the four elements and are meant to suggest the power of modern medicine. The neatness of the cabinets, the packets and packets of pills and tablets, were striking. However, Hirst's view is that 'you can only cure people for so long and then they are going to die, anyway'.
The exhibition did confront me with life and death, the decay of corpses, all the dead animals in formaldehyde, and even the chemist's shop. There was also some vivid colour in the splatter pictures, beauty in the butterfly patterns.
Hirst said 'Life and death are the biggest polar opposites there are. I like love and I like hate. I like all these opposites. On and off. Happy and sad. In artwork I always try to say something and deny it all the time.' The diamond skull is a great example of this, the preposterous decoration of a skull with precious stones.
