Damien Hirst mural to adorn new Broad restaurant Otium

Visitors won’t have to set foot inside the new Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles before seeing an interesting piece of modern art.

The team behind Otium, the restaurant on the 24,000-square-foot public plaza next to the Broad, announced Tuesday that it will feature a large-scale outdoor photographic mural by artist Damien Hirst.

The mural is being installed on the south facade of the restaurant, which is under construction with the goal of opening in October. “Isolated Elements, 2015” measures nearly 84 feet by 32 feet. It’s based on Hirst’s 1991 sculpture “Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding,” a wall-mounted cabinet filled with fish preserved in formaldehyde.

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The restaurant, which will have a rooftop herb garden, is located on a plaza that’s elevated above Hope Street, between 2nd and 3rd streets. The mural wall cantilevers over Hope Street so it’s visible to pedestrians and motorists below.

Otium is a collaboration between restaurateur and managing partner of Sprout L.A., Bill Chait, and chef Timothy Hollingsworth, formerly of the French Laundry in Napa Valley.

“Opening next door to the Broad presents many exciting opportunities for Otium to identify itself first and foremost as a place for artistic expression in all its forms, and this has given me an amazing blank canvas to craft a very unique and exciting restaurant for Los Angeles,” Hollingsworth said in the announcement. “I’ve always been a great admirer of Damien Hirst’s work, so we were thrilled when we had the opportunity to include a mural of his as part of the restaurant’s design.”

That opportunity arose in part because of Joanne Heyler, founding director of the Broad, who worked with the Otium team and Hirst to select the mural.

Other Hirst works will be on view in the Broad’s inaugural exhibition, including the sculptures “Away From the Flock” (1994) and “Something Solid Beneath the Surface of All Creatures Great and Small” (2001) and the painting “Chlorpropamide (pfs)” (1996).

The Broad’s collection includes 14 works by Hirst.

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