Damien Hirst takes over Château La Coste

It is clear when pulling into the glorious, 500-acre winery and cultural destination Château La Coste that there is something different afoot. While art aficionados will know Louise Bourgeois’ spider is crouching in the water, ready to spring, as Yoko Ono’s wishes sway on the branches of a tree and Prune Nourry’s pregnant woman reclines into the ground, they may not expect to be greeted by Damien Hirst’s vast anatomical sculpture of a man. Elsewhere, the resigned face of Charity confronts the visitor as they begin their tour around the estate, while a centaur from Treasures points the way.

Damien Hirst’s Château La Coste takeover

These outdoor sculptures dotted around the grounds are only the beginning of Hirst’s immersive, full takeover of Château La Coste. The first artist to completely take over both the grounds and the five exhibition pavilions, Hirst is using the opportunity to showcase more than 90 sculptures and paintings, including work previously unseen, as part of major exhibition, ‘The Light That Shines’, presented by HENI.

A long friendship between Hirst and Château La Coste founder, Paddy McKillen, means this project has been on the cards for years, the obvious culmination of McKillen’s long-standing philosophy to only work with architects and artists he personally admires. 

Seeing Hirst’s work in the context of its Provençal backdrop feels oddly natural. His career-long preoccupations with the tensions between art and science, and life and death, take on a sharp focus when viewed against the natural surrounding beauty, the sculptures at the mercy of the seasons. His work is carefully placed, with great consideration given to the character of each pavilion. Particularly special is viewing the never-before-seen The Empress Paintings in the remarkable Richard Rogers Gallery. Vivid orange, the gallery floats over the trees, a masterpiece of engineering that seemingly requires no support. It’s a magical foil for Hirst’s red and black butterflies, also hovering above us, cast into hypnotic kaleidoscopes in a surreal immersion. 

Underground, the sharks float, swimming through the underwater light of the Renzo Piano Pavilion. It’s a serene, light-filled space for key pieces from the Natural History series, which fluctuate as the light does, peculiarly ethereal. The Bastide Gallery holds the brightly coloured The Secret Gardens Paintings, while new work, Cosmos Paintings, alongside sculptures from the Meteorites and Satellites series, are given the clean white canvas of Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s Old Wine Storehouse, boosted by the intimacy of its proportions. Hirst, who was inspired by the long-exposure images from Hubble Space Telescope for the new Cosmos Paintings series, began by painting the canvases black and fixing them to the floor, to then go over them with paint, which makes for a rough and textured viscerality. 

In the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium sits a generous amount of pieces from 2017’s ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’, first shown at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice. The winding proportions of the pavilion respect the narrative of the work, a thread that runs throughout.

‘Damien Hirst: The Light That Shines’ , presented by HENI, is on from 2 March – 23 June 2024 at Château la Coste

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