A joint project “Ask Damien Hirst a question” by the PinchukArtCentre and Korrespondent.net has started on 15 April 2009. During the next 8 days Ukrainians will be able to submit a question for one of the most iconic artist of our time. This can be done on-line through a specially created webpage. Two days prior to the exhibition, on 23 April Damien Hirst will answer five most interesting questions selected by the organisers. You will find the artist’s answers and his exclusive video-interview on the Korrespondent.net website.

On 25 April the PinchukArtCentre opens Requiem, a major retrospective of over 100 works dating from the early 1990’s to today, by Damien Hirst. For the first time ever the exhibition will present a series of Skull paintings the artist created between 2006 and 2008. Requiem opens on 25 April and continues through 20 September 2009.

In his work over the last two decades, Hirst has continually produced paintings, sculptures and drawings that radically and directly address our shared quest for life in the face of inevitable death. Through an exploration of beauty and decay, love and desire, science and religion, history and art, Hirst has created some of the most conceptually profound and challenging artworks of our time.

Background:

Born in Bristol in 1965, Damien Hirst grew up in Leeds and studied at Goldsmiths College, London. Most notable amongst the exhibitions he curated whilst at college was Freeze, in 1988, in which he exhibited his work and that of his contemporaries. The exhibition is widely believed to have been the starting point of the Young British Artists’ careers, and a defining moment in kick-starting cutting edge British contemporary art.

Hirst’s body of work confronts the scientific, philosophical and religious aspects of human existence and includes sculpture, painting and printmaking. He has exhibited widely and was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995 for ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’. In 2004, Hirst collaborated with Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst to exhibit recent works at Tate Britain, under the title In-a-Gadda-da-Vida. In 2006, works from the artist’s murderme collection were exhibited at the Serpentine gallery, London: ‘In the darkest hour there may be light.‘

Hirst’s work can be found in many important collections worldwide, including Tate, London, UK; British Council, UK; MoMA, New York, USA; Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK; Broad Art Foundation; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands; Neue Galerie Graz, Austria and State Museum of Berlin, Germany.

PinchukArtCentre, one of the largest centres for contemporary art in the Eastern Europe, opened in September 2006. The Art Centre is one of the projects of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in the realm of culture. Among the key missions of the PinchukArtCentre is to present exhibitions by leading international and Ukrainian artists, support varied cultural projects and other. To the date, the PinchukArtCentre has presented nine major exhibitions viewed by over 500 000 visitors. In June-November 2007, the PinchukArtCentre officially presented Ukraine at the 52nd Venice Biennale with the art project: “Poem about an Inland Sea”.

On 25 February 2009 were announced the names of the 20 shortlisted nominees for the PinchukArtCentre Prize, a nationwide prize in contemporary art for young Ukrainian artists. An exhibition of works by the shortlisted artists will be held at the PinchukArtCentre in October 2009.

Established in 2006 by a businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation is one of the largest Ukrainian private philanthropic organisations. The Foundation develops and implements social projects aimed at modernising Ukraine and nurturing a new generation of Ukrainian leaders.

The Foundation's priority fields of activities are health care, education, culture, human rights, Ukraine's global integration and local communities' development.

Among the largest projects of the Foundation are: the "Cradles of Hope" programme for opening neonatal health care centres throughout Ukraine, student scholarship programme "Zavtra.UA", the PinchukArtCentre contemporary art institution, international network YES (Yalta European Strategy) to support Ukraine’s aspirations for European integration.