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I can’t understand why most people believe
in medicine and don’t believe in art, without
questioning either.
Damien Hirst, 1997
L&M Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of early medicine cabinets by Damien Hirst. Assembled together
for the first time are the seminal Sex Pistols cabinets from 1989. Each cabinet takes its name from one
of the twelve title tracks of the legendary 1977 debut punk album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex
Pistols.”
Works such as Bodies, Problems, Liar and No Feelings (all 1989) signaled a defining moment in art when these
four were first shown at Hirst’s ground-breaking Goldsmith’s degree show in 1989. As Arthur Danto writes in
the catalogue essay, Hirst’s “Medicine Cabinets constitute a constellation of still lifes that express and reflect
the human body as a field of vulnerabilities and of hopeful medical interventions that have replaced the
body as a narrative agent that artists must learn to depict in heroic stances.”
The exhibition also includes the first two cabinets Hirst ever made: Sinner (1988), in which the artist incorporated
drugs from his grandmother’s medicine cabinet and Enemy (1988-89), both of which presage the Sex
Pistols cabinets. Also on view is a monumental four-part cabinet The Sex Pistols (1996-97), shown publicly
here for the first time and a range of Sex Pistols ephemera, including prints, posters and t-shirts from the
seventies and eighties.
A fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Arthur Danto, James Frey and Steve Jones, including a catalogue
raisonné of the complete medicine cabinets, will accompany the exhibition.
Gallery Hours: 10:00 - 5:30pm, Tuesday - Saturday and by appointment.
L&M Arts 45 East 78th Street New York NY 10075 +1.212.861.0020 www.lmgallery.com
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