Left: Daniel Craig with collector Victor Pinchuk. (Photo: Kate Sutton) Right: Damien Hirst. (Photo courtesy PinchukArtCentre)
Love Hirst
Kiev,
Ukraine 04.28.09
LAST FRIDAY, the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev delivered its “Requiem,” a sprawling selection of Damien Hirst’s recent works, largely culled from private collections. After a year of planning and an eight-week-long install (running up to the final hour before the opening, when assistants were busy hair-spraying a giant ashtray), the exhibition is the culmination of the close friendship and creative collaboration between Hirst and collector Victor Pinchuk. The private view took cues from Bulgakov, with a beaming Pinchuk—playing the part of Margarita at the Midnight Ball—welcoming the glittering procession of artists, oil magnates, and other affluent guests filtering through the institution’s single staircase. Over the course of the evening, more than two thousand visitors would brave the crush of the tiny stairwell, among them curators Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sir Norman Rosenthal, and Suzanne Pagé, artist Michael Craig-Martin, and of course Hirst’s London dealer Jay Jopling. Conspicuously absent was Hirst’s other dealer, Larry Gagosian. (“I think he had a head cold,” shrugged one art adviser.)