Dead Ends Died Out, Examined

Half-smoked cigarettes and ashes are tidily placed on thin shelves like curiosities in a museum. This display case combining harmful waste with a sanitised museum practice composes the strange score of a vital - or lethal - cycle punctuated by crushed cigarette butts.

Dead Ends Died Out, Examined is from the series of five "Cigarette Cabinets" created in 1993 and 2008. The works’ titles systematically refer to death, suffocation, the abyss and purgatory, but one also mentions love. Work, death and its celebration and the glorification of life are recurring themes in Damien Hirst’s work.

Hirst's Dead Ends Died Out, Examined was presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the "Agony and Ecstasy" exhibition at Songeun Artspace in Seoul (2011).