The different elements that make up New Religion form a chapel dedicated to desire; the desire to keep mortality at bay but which can’t help confront death.
The forty-four silkscreen prints, and four sculptures that make up New Religion work like a fresco cycle – moving from the Creation of the World, through the Stations of the Cross and towards the Last Judgement. The prints surround an altarpiece with a cedar cross studded with gem-like pills, a child’s skull, a large carved marble pill, and a heart wrapped in barbed wire and pierced by needles and razor blades. Hirst’s vision is a marriage of the sacred and the profane, a contemplation of the fragility of life and the quest for longevity.
