Image: Shapero Modern, London
Visitors walking past Shapero Modern on New Bond Street in London can currently see Damien Hirst’s ‘The Souls on Jacob’s Ladder Take Their Flight’ in the gallery windows as part of Summer Show 2026. The presentation runs until 31 August 2026 at the London venue, with the work described in the gallery’s announcement as a vibrant yellow butterfly image set against a matte-black ground.
The piece dates from 2007 and is identified in the gallery material as part of a portfolio of six aquatint and photogravure etchings. Shapero Modern frames the work as one of Hirst’s butterfly images, a strand of his practice that sits alongside the artist’s better-known spot paintings. The gallery’s text emphasizes the work’s condensed, singular composition: instead of multiple butterflies or a kaleidoscopic arrangement, Hirst isolates one butterfly silhouette.
According to the announcement, the title ‘The Souls on Jacob’s Ladder Take Their Flight’ refers to the biblical story of Jacob’s dream of a ladder connecting Earth and Heaven, with angels ascending and descending. Shapero Modern says Hirst alters that story by suggesting that the souls themselves “take their flight,” with the butterfly transformed into those souls. The gallery also situates the image within Hirst’s broader concerns with mortality and death, themes it says recur across his work.
The gallery’s online text says Hirst began exploring butterflies after becoming fascinated in the 1980s by how insects could become embedded in primer on his canvases, appearing as though preserved in time. It describes that fascination as an artistic turning point that led him to experiment with fragile butterfly wings arranged into compositions that recall stained glass windows, kaleidoscopes or religious altarpieces. In this display, however, the butterfly is presented alone, as a monumental silhouette rather than part of a more complex pattern.
The presentation is part of Shapero Modern’s Summer Show 2026, which the gallery says is visible from the windows of its New Bond Street space. Shapero Modern gives its address as 94 New Bond Street, London W1S 1SJ, and lists opening hours of Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm and Sunday from 11:30 am to 6 pm.
The gallery’s notice also identifies the work’s date as 2007 and includes a photograph credit to Luke Stephenson. No sales information is given in the source material, and the announcement does not provide any additional curatorial framework beyond its window display and summer-show listing. The work remains on view through 31 August 2026.
