Product description
Taking its cue from Damien Hirst’s 1991 The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, Stanton reverses Hirst’s gesture: what once shocked now whispers; what once confronted now contemplates.
At its centre, a faded shark drifts within a glass vitrine, while a domesticated elephant stands before it. The animal’s gaze meets not the specimen, but its own reflection — a meditation on consciousness, mortality, and the limits of self-awareness.
Above them hang the ghosts of revolutionary art and tragedy: Goya, David, and Géricault, their once-radical visions now framed as relics of Enlightenment ambition. Stanton’s scene reflects on ideals that once promised redemption, contrasting Hirst’s shock-driven spectacle with a quiet meditation on impermanence and memory.
