The September Armory Edit

This week Guy Hepner brings together a selection of works by Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, spanning three distinct approaches to image, repetition, and material.

Hirst's Tryptophan, Horizontal Spots, and Gly-Gly-Ala extend his ongoing engagement with the spot motif, a system he has used since the late 1980s to explore color relationships stripped of hierarchy or narrative, alongside the language of pharmacology and chemical nomenclature that runs throughout his practice.

From Basquiat, the room includes Hollywood Africans, Alphonso, Odors, and Figures Complete — works that move across his central concerns of race, music, art history, and self-mythology, rendered in the layered text, figuration, and mark-making that define his short but prolific career.

The Warhol selection draws from several of his most collected series: Marilyn Monroe (F.S. II.28 and F.S. II.30), Campbell's Soup II (Chicken 'N Dumplings), the Ads portfolio (Apple Mac), and Mickey Mouse — together representing his enduring focus on celebrity, consumer culture, and the mechanics of mass reproduction.