Damien Hirst Opens First Asia Solo Exhibition at Seoul's MMCA

Damien Hirst’s first Asia solo exhibition is set to open at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (MMCA Seoul), running from May 20 to June 28. The show, titled Damien Hirst: There Is No Truth, But Everything Is Possible, will present roughly 50 works spanning from his early pieces to recent major works.

The exhibition highlights some of his best-known projects. It includes A Thousand Years (1990), which places a bleeding dead cow head, an electric fly killer, and maggots in a glass case to explore the cycle of life. It also features The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living (1991), a giant shark suspended in a formaldehyde tank, a work that helped define Hirst’s shock-value approach to mortality. Another centerpiece is For the Love of God, a platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds, with teeth sourced from an actual 18th-century human skull.

Hirst, born in 1965 in Bristol, rose to international prominence after moving to London to study art and organizing the 1988 graduate show Freeze at Goldsmiths College. The artist has faced long-running controversy over economic practices in the art market, including accusations of directly selling new works at auction to drive up prices or engaging in wash trading. His wealth has been reported as exceeding £300 million, making him one of the wealthiest living artists.

The Seoul exhibition also recreates two of Hirst’s London-based ventures: the restaurant Pharmacy, opened in 1998, and his River Studio, his working space in London. The displays are intended to give visitors a sense of the artist’s creative ecosystem beyond the gallery wall.

For international audiences, the show signals the globalization of the contemporary art market and the growing interest in major Western artists within East Asia. U.S. readers can view the landmark event as part of broader dynamics shaping art valuations, cross-border loans and insurance for high-value works, and the global circulation of major contemporary art.

MMCA Seoul, as Korea’s national museum of modern and contemporary art, has positioned the venue as a key hub in transnational art dialogue. The exhibition underscores Korea’s role in presenting leading international artists to local and regional audiences, with implications for future partnerships, loans, and co-curated exhibitions with American institutions.

Beyond the Korean art scene, the show offers a window into the global appeal and market impact of Hirst’s provocative oeuvre. For U.S. audiences, that means potential shifts in how spectacular works are acquired, exhibited, and valued across continents, and how major museums gauge collaboration with top-tier contemporary artists.