The series of recent Colour Space paintings by Damien Hirst (born 1965) have deep roots in Hirst's practice, relating to his Spot Paintings, a series begun by the artist in 1986, during his first year as a student at Goldsmiths. Conceived in 2016, Colour Space serves as a response to the iconic Spot Painting series. Where the Spot Paintings are painstakingly rigorous in their formulaic grid structure, intended to look as if they'd been made "by a person trying to paint like a machine," the Colour Space series is looser and more painterly, featuring informal drips and splashes of paint. Both series, however, share a system—no two colors repeat within a single canvas.
The Spot Paintings were always conceived of as an ongoing project (1,365 and counting), but Colour Space is a finite series, consisting of more than 260 works painted with household gloss paint on canvas. These paintings are then subcategorized by spot size: 6 mm, 10 mm, 25 mm, 75 mm and 100 mm; with a selection executed on a black background. Each painting is fully illustrated in this publication, alongside artwork details and an introductory essay by Ann Gallagher, director of collections at Tate.
