NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian Gallery will present “The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” by Damien Hirst.

The exhibition has been conceived to take place simultaneously across each of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong. It will include loans from public institutions and private collections as well as from the artist. The exhibition will open in every city on January 12th and continue through February 18th, 2012. This is the first time Gagosian Gallery has dedicated all locations at once to a body of work by one artist.

Hirst’s spot paintings are among the most distinctive in contemporary art, a symbol that is recognized universally, cutting across boundaries of culture and language. Beginning with the first spot painting created in 1986, to monumental canvases where no single color is ever repeated, to the most recent works, some of which comprise spots of just 1 millimeter in diameter, this exhibition will present Hirst’s “world of spots” in a truly global context.

The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, a fully illustrated, complete and definitive reference to all spot paintings made by Hirst from 1986 to the present will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

“Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” precedes the first major museum retrospective of Hirst’s work, which opens at Tate Modern in London in April, 2012.

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, England. Solo exhibitions include "The Agony and the Ecstasy," Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples (2004); "A Selection of Works by Damien Hirst from Various Collections," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2005); Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005); "For the Love of God," Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008); "No Love Lost," The Wallace Collection, London (2009); "Requiem," Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev (2009); and “Cornucopia,” the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco (2010). He received the Turner Prize in 1995. His work is included in important public and private collections throughout the world.

Hirst lives and works in London and Devon, United Kingdom.