Damien Hirst's first public exhibition opens in Switzerland - on ice
Last month, Damien Hirst posted on his Instagram. “I wasn’t there due to Covid” he wrote, “… but this installation is blowing my mind.” While the absent Hirst might have been overcome, for the people who were there in St Moritz, more than minds were truly blown. On 18 December, a 3 tonne sculpture called The Monk was lowered onto a military pontoon placed in the middle of the town’s frozen lake.
Apart from the risks of completing an unrehearsed operation, what the team of installers hadn’t reckoned with was the freezing vortex created by the blades of the helicopter as it dipped down to place its precious cargo in position. “It was, actually, quite terrifying,” says Oscar Humphries, one of the organisers of the event.
The Monk is part of an exhibition of Hirst’s work spread around town – and the first public exhibition of the artist's work in Switzerland. “Which in itself is incredible, though perhaps we couldn’t have got the timing more wrong,” laughs Humphries, in view of varying Covid restrictions. “Though to be honest, there are dozens of people on the ice going to see it every day.”
Indeed, the ultra-rich will always find their way to St Moritz in the winter – the arts patron and collector Lady Ritblat had already left Humphries an Instagram DM of congratulations – though this year hasn’t been up to the town’s usual playful standards, where both the skiing and the after-skiing have fabulous reputations - it’s rumoured to be where Sienna Miller began her whirlwind romance with Lucas Zwirner, son of the world’s number one art dealer, which ended last September.
While polo is usually played on the frozen lake (which can freeze to a depth of 50cm) before some late-night cavorting in the devilishly expensive nightclubs, this year art is taking priority.
“It’s not all glitz in St Moritz,” says Humphries, whose father the comedian Barry is a keen art collector and fired up his son’s interest in the art world. Humphries junior is a former editor of the respected Apollo magazine, and the organiser of many art shows around the world, and something of a reformed man about town himself.
“It’s true that it is a seasonal place, but it has a legit cultural history too. [The major Swiss dealer] Bruno Bischofberger opened his gallery here in 1963, showing Lichtenstein and Warhol. In 1990, he showed a series of huge bronze sculptures by Julian Schnabel on the mountainside.”
Indeed, the town and surrounding area are now home to around 30 galleries and private museums, some seasonal, some not. The nearby private airport of Samedan works at full pelt throughout the winter season but it’s hardly slack the rest of the year.
The Hirst show has been under discussion since 2019, and was in part the idea of Marco Voena, a Milanese art dealer who owns a fair bit of the British artist’s work. “Marco is a great lover of life,” says Humphries, “and possibly the only person crazy enough to suggest this.”
Hirst, for his part, was attracted by the location. “I’m so happy to see my work outside in this mind-blowing setting,” he says by email. “'Wow' is such a good response to art for me. I hope that I’m giving that to people in St Moritz.”
What began as a modest venture now includes 40 artworks, three outdoors and the rest spread across two indoor venues. At the Forum Paracelsus, a neoclassical building on the site of an old thermal bath (you can still take the waters, so full of iron they taste of blood), pieces including Stripper will be installed.
The 2006 stainless steel cabinet, filled with carefully arranged medical implements, is one of Hirst’s iconic pieces. In the Protestant Church – so minimalist that it already feels like a white cube art gallery – visitors can see Kaleidoscope works composed of many overlaid butterflies, and some of the animals in formaldehyde for which Hirst is best known.
Hirst and his long-term curator Jason Beard have worked remotely but meticulously on the show. “It’s like they’re here,” says Humphries, now in St Moritz making the final adjustments to the installation. “So much of the work feels impossible to install, or even make, and working with Damien and Jason is like seeing behind the magician’s curtain. You get a glimpse of how it’s done. It’s where art meets science.”
Of course the biggest noise will be made by the outdoor works. The Temple, a 6.6m anatomical figure will stand on the east side of the lake. Two Figures with a Drum – a huge bronze sculpture of two hard-to-discern beings encrusted with shells, crustacea and sponges – is embedded in nature on the lake’s western side. Along with The Monk, an equally encrusted figure in bronze, it was last seen at Hirst’s provocative exhibition in Venice in 2017 called Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.
Then over a thousand works were spread over two venues, the fictional spoils of a shipwreck allegedly discovered in 2008 off the African coast. Part financed by Francois Pinault, founder of the Kering group which owns fashion houses including McQueen, Gucci and Bottega Veneta, and who is a major collector of Hirst’s work, some saw that show as a way to uphold and inflate the value of the artist’s output.
Others thought it was a fabulous act of chutzpah, and humour, not least the goddesses and pharaohs who looked suspiciously like Rihanna, Kate Moss and Pharrell Williams.
In Venice, some animal rights activists gathered to protest against Hirst’s formaldehyde works, while a cultural cohort decried his sheer presence in what they call “the city of real art”. In St Moritz, there’s been no dissent at all. In fact the municipality has been very helpful, according to both Voena and Humphries.
There is a possibility that they have been economically useful too, though no one will say who is really picking up the bill. And while the works are not officially on sale, those with one ear to the ever-humming vortex of art world gossip (Covid cannot silence it) are asking why such hefty works would be brought to this art-oriented town if offers were not to be considered. Whatever the case, it will certainly reinforce interest in the work to see it displayed with such bravura.
Whether anyone reading this will get to St Moritz before the exhibition closes on 28 February remains to be seen. It is one show, after all, that cannot be extended. “We have to get [The Monk off the lake] before it thaws!” says Hirst on his Instagram. “Otherwise it’s gonna end up at the bottom of the lake; now wouldn’t that be ironic?”
Mental Escapology is in St Moritz from 23 January to 28 February 2021
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