Untitled AAAAAAA

Untitled AAAAAAA, 1992, is from one of Damien Hirst's most celebrated series of works, the medicine cabinets. These cabinets, together with the formaldehyde works represent the essence of Hirst's concerns and his intriguing vision of art and life. In Hirst's words: "Art seems to me to be about life [like medicine]. If art wasn't around we'd still have life but if life wasn't here you could forget about the art, so I find it difficult to believe in art. On the one hand I want to be an artist and on the other I want to be realistic. There's a clash somewhere and a feeling in me that I can't override; the more I try to escape it the more deviously it evades me, its an inescapable situation.' (In: 'Damien Hirst' London 1991, unpaged). One can read the medicine cabinets as power structures, or as a comment on today's consumerist society and the drug industry, or simply as metaphors for the human body, since the artist places of medicine for the head on the top shelf and works his way down through the human anatomy with each descending shelf.