Right on time on a partly cloudy October morning, Mr Asare took out the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and stepped into the Eyestorm gallery in London in what was supposed to be the weekly cleaning of the white-walled space. Except on this Wednesday morning, it showed clear evidence of a party the night before; cardboard boxes of wine bottles, randomly placed dirty glasses and a wooden floor sympathising with the brisk and rough of the autumn streets outside. Although the space itself was a small mess, the big display windows facing the passing public - at this time of day rushing to the office - was a disgrace. The star of the event the night before, a new sculptural edition by Damien Hirst, was neatly placed on an easel, but around it - on a small table and a chair - “people” had left paint brushes, open tubes of acrylic paint; not to mention a half-empty take-away coffee cup, chopsticks, beer bottles, cigarette packets and a repulsive overflown ashtray. Thirty minutes later, Mr Asare’s had progressed from an initial sigh to filling a couple of binbags and dumping them outside, and in the process, unknowingly, made his claim to art world fame in the coming days.

What looked like a mess was in fact an art installation by Hirst, encouraged by Eyestom to give everyone a glimpse into what the artist’s studio looked like, as part of the promotion of the two editions titled Painting-by-Numbers. To the media the clean-up incident was seen as one more welcomed opportunity to have a go at Hirst, and at the same time praising Mr Asare as a member of the public who had the courage to tell the truth that the emperor was naked. Some newspapers went on to suggest that the cleaner should be offered a position as a curator of a public institution, as here was a guy who could tell good art from bad. Mr Asare handled his new-found fame with bravour and Hirst didn’t seem to mind. Within hours the bin bags had been recovered by the gallery’s staff and the “disgraceful” display was re-created in all its delightful or chaotic details, to be admired by the artist’s loyal subjects. Throughout the furore, Hirst’s reaction was limited to “Fantastic. Very funny”, undoubtedly loving being in the spotlight.

In 2001, Hirst was already well versed when it came to achieving media attention; any news was considered good news. Thirteen years earlier, Hirst and fellow student, Angus Fairhurst, had convinced a group of second-year students at Goldsmith College of Art into renting a run-down warehouse in London’s east docklands, fixing it up with some white paint and invited the public, the press and the art world to ‘Freeze’; a show organised by the students and exhibiting the works of soon-to-be graduates. It was a bold and unprecedented move and the art critics had mixed feelings about these young, persistent and rule-breaking artists. The show was refreshingly provocative and noisy with works such as Abigail Lane’s installation of oversized shirts hanging over two chairs and door paintings by Gary Hume. As a self-made rebel in world of advertising, the art collector Charles Saatchi loved every bit of it and in the coming years Saatchi would become an important sponsor to many of the Goldsmith graduates of the eighties and the nineties, brazenly promoting his private collection and the works of young British artists; a group later collectively known as the YBAs.

Amongst the novel sculptures and shocking photographs at the ‘Freeze’ exhibition in July ’88, Hirst’s spot paintings stood out. Grids and rows of meticulously painted circular spots - never two in the same colour - filled clinical white canvases, bringing a kind of visual order to the chaos around it. The endless combinations appealed to Hirst, and was his first step into a conceptual colour theory where hues are representative of emotions or moods; in contrary to theories exploring their physical attributes, such as wavelengths, or the interaction of colour which became a life-long exploration for the renowned artist Josef Albers. By the end of the nineties, Hirst had revealed a few hundred unique spot paintings where a far majority of them had been painted by a team of young art students under strict supervision of the artist himself. The media was outraged. This was one of Britain’s most hyped artists, selling his sought-after spot paintings but where few had been touched by the hand of Hirst. If the art world had reached new heights in hypocrisy, Hirst was the poster-boy.

The two box-sets, Painting-by-Numbers, released that October evening in London, was Hirst’s humorous response to the outcry. Studio assistants working closely with an artist in the creation of a masterpiece was nothing revolutionary, and it wasn’t invented by Hirst. It had been around for centuries, if not millennia. In 2001, Hirst simply took it a step further and invited everyone to become one of his assistants. Choosing between a red or a blue kit, designed to look like a pharmaceutical product and supporting the often unpronounceable titles of his spot paintings, the polyfoam box clearly declares the contents on the outside of the box: “nineteen by seventeen inch canvas, ninety enamel paints, ninety brushes”. On the canvas, ninety circular outlines had been printed with a number in the middle that corresponded to a number on the paint buckets; true to the spirit of the famous self-contained painting sets popular with children. All left to an aspiring artist assistant was to buy a box, take a stroll down memory lane, and fill in the awaiting circles.

Painting-by-Numbers is one of several of Damien Hirst’s thought-provoking works; this one questioning where the value to an artwork lies. Is it in the idea or concept? Or is it in the making?

Following the successful Valium, Opium and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) from 2000 and Beautiful, Galactic, Exploding Screenprint (Spin) the year after, Painting-by-Numbers (Red) and Painting-by-Numbers (Blue) are two exceptional and unique editions released exclusively by Eyestorm in the three-year collaboration with Damien Hirst. On the outside of the box, Painting-by-Numbers comes with the statutory information of a pharmacy drug: its “contents” and “damien hirst, an edition of one hundred and seventy five, july two thousand and one”. Inside, all the tools required to make a spot painting are neatly presented, including a canvas stamped with Hirst’s signature on the back.

To view the edition in further detail and to find more information about available works by Damien Hirst, visit the artist’s page here.