LG X Damien Hirst: A History of Painting

Industry leading  home entertainment company, LG, will stage a special one-off exhibition of works by Damien Hirst at Frieze London this October that will explore the creative potential of innovative technology and how it can be a powerful partner for new developments in digital art.

LG X Damien Hirst: A History of Painting will show major works by the artist alongside stunning digital reproductions and NFTs presented on LG’s  most advanced OLED TV products, breathing new life into digital art through astonishing new perspective, detail and colour. The exhibition, which will take place at the LG Space at Frieze London, celebrates new partnerships for LG between Damien Hirst, one of the best-known artists working today, and with Frieze, the world’s foremost media and events company for art.

At the heart of the exhibition will be a display of iconic Hirst art works, including paintings from his Kaleidoscope and Spin series, hung alongside self-lit digital reproductions on LG OLED TVs. LG’s OLED technology utilises pixels that turn on and off individually (‘self-lit’) to achieve immaculate colour reproduction and infinite contrast, resulting in exceptionally lifelike colours as well as deep blacks and a contrast ratio that maximises immersion and realism. The OLED technology behind these extraordinary digital images seems to penetrate the paintings themselves, creating something akin to a digital avatar and turning them into a visual experience that is entirely new.

Also highlighted in the presentation will be Hirst’s first NFT series, The Currency, launched this summer. The Currency is a collection of 10,000 NFTs which correspond to 10,000 unique physical artworks by Damien Hirst, with the NFTs containing high resolution images of the front and back of each of the artworks. The physical works, which are stored in a secure vault in the UK, have been brought to life through their launch on Palm, a new environmentally friendly NFT ecosystem connected to Ethereum, and will be seen by many for the first time ever at LG X Damien Hirst: A History of Painting, in incredible OLED picture quality. On 14^th October – the first public entry day of Frieze London – The Currency Exchange Period begins: a ten-month window in which purchasers of these NFTs may decide to keep either the digital NFT or the physical artwork. Whichever they choose, the other gets burned.

LG X Damien Hirst: A History of Painting has been conceived by Jason Kim of BESIGN Studio in association with Hirst’s Studio and Skipwiths . It will be staged inside an immersive temporary architectural intervention by London-based designer Je-Uk Kim of JiB design studio.

LG is the exclusive consumer electronics company to work with Frieze, and this collaboration represents a significant expression of a major new commitment by LG to the arts. Further details will be announced in the coming months.