Ahead of the 21st Century The Pisces Collection

Damien Hirst's Alone Yet Together, a pseudoscientific installation of fish suspended in formaldehyde in small, identical glass boxes, graces the cover of this volume. As the singular image selected to represent the Pisces Collection, it demands some exploration of wordplay. Piscesis, after all, the zoological term for fish and also the name of a zodiac sign--the astrological sign, as it happens, of the collection's anonymous owner. Devoted to contemporary art from the 1980s onward, the Pisces Collection takes not an encyclopedic approach but a focused one, concentrating on representing the work of a relatively small group of artists in depth. For the first time, 150 pieces from this very valuable collection are presented to the international public, featuring work by John M. Armleder, Ross Bleckner, George Condo, Wim Delvoye, Fischli & Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Mariko Mori, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, Ugo Rondinone, Thomas Ruff, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Rosemarie Trockel, Franz West, and Christopher Wool. Highlights from the 80s include Prince's My Nameand Koons's Encased Five Rows; the 90s are represented through photographic works by Sherman and Gursky, alongside Struths's Paradise 2 (Pilgrim Sands). Hirst's Something solid beneath the surface of several creatures great and small, with its use of live and dead animals, is one of the collection's more controversial pieces.