Damien Hirst - Bodies of Love (from The Currency, 2016)

Unique Enamel on paper, 2016, signed, titled, numbered and dated verso, lower edge. Additional authenticity features include a watermark, as well as a microdot and a hologram containing a portrait of the artist. The paper is hand made and is cut manually, producing spontaneous imperfections and asymmetries.

Size: 8-1/2 x 11-3/4 inches (21.6 x 29.8 cm) (sheet)

Edition: 7448/10000 (5149 physical artworks exist - the others were bought as NFT’s with the original artworks destroyed)

Published by: Heni Editions,London (https://heni.com/nft/collections/the-currency)

Note: Damien Hirst's "Spot Paintings" began in the late 1980s, but became iconic and revered in the late nineties. All painted by hand they gave the illusion of being mechanically produced. Some of the composition of colours are random, others calculated and some are based on the chemical structure of narcotics and pharmaceuticals. Around 2016, the artist began to produce a new body of work, this time filling blank surfaces with fields of heavily condensed dots that overlap and sprawl across the sheet. "The Currency" is an output of this recent epoch, serving as an intimate example of his signature (now reimagined) motif. Introduced as his first NFT series, "The Currency" is an important and pivotal work for Hirst. The artist created 10,000 original paintings, each with a corresponding NFT. Following an application process, the successful purchasers were faced with a decision to either keep the NFT or trade it in for an original painting. The works that were not collected were ultimately burned.

The collection is on the Palm blockchain, a token-powered ecosystem for NFTs which has a two-way bridge to Ethereum, and features low gas costs, fast transaction finality, and 99% more energy efficiency than proof of work systems.