Damien Hirst has unveiled his new series of paintings in Brazil, following his universally panned exhibitions at the Wallace Collection, where he showed a group of Francis Bacon inspired skull paintings and his 2012 exhibition of "Parrot Pictures" at White Cube Bermondsey. For his latest painting exhibition, Hirst has created what he describes as "portraits of living cities," the "Black Scalpel Cityscapes" are made up of vast numbers of surgical instruments that combine to create bird’s-eye views of urbanized areas from around the world. With the series, Hirst investigates subjects pertaining to the sometimes-disquieting realities of modern life – surveillance, urbanisation, globalisation and the virtual nature of conflict – as well as elements relating to the universal human condition, such as our inability to arrest physical decay.
In the paintings, manmade features and natural elements such as buildings, rivers and roads are depicted in scalpels as well as razor blades, hooks, iron filings and safety-pins, all set against black backgrounds.
