While he has his detractors, many say that Damien Hirst is a genius. In certain circles, he and his artwork -- the shark in a tank full of formaldehyde, for instance -- epitomize contemporary art.

"I want to blow people away, I want people to gasp," Mr. Hirst said while in Hong Kong recently for a small solo show of his work at the opening of the first Gagosian gallery in Asia. Indeed, the diamond-covered baby skull that's on display in Hong Kong is shocking to some, and considered hardly art by others.

Since the 1980s, when Mr. Hirst first hit the art radar with the rise of the Young British Artists, he and his works have attracted the media, the socially aspiring and a number of contemporary-art buyers. Last May at ART HK, Hong Kong's annual art fair, an Asian buyer paid US$2.8 million for one of his works -- a dove carcass suspended in a tank of liquid -- sold by White Cube gallery, which represents Mr. Hirst in London.

Mr. Hirst, by some calculations the world's wealthiest living artist, does not shy away from controversy. The 45-year-old says of the art dealer Larry Gagosian, who represents him in the U.S., "He's my income." And he dismisses art critics in general as "failed artists with an ax to grind." But while some critics dismiss his works, others love them: A recent reader's poll by an art newsletter rated one Hirst show in the U.S. as the best exhibit of 2010, and one Hirst show in Germany as the worst.

In a statement to introduce "Forgotten Promises," a series of hyper-realistic oil paintings of butterflies also on view at Gagosian Hong Kong, he said: "A photograph is from a moment, a split second. Painting is about stopping to look at the world, considering it, and giving it more and more importance."