Among the apparently derivative artworks are a shark in formaldehyde, which has gone for £2.28m, and a work involving three preserved sheep, which is for sale at £5.7m.

Even the artist, who recently put his fortune at £100m, admits that he risks treading water creatively. “I feel I am not going anywhere any more with these works. They look nice and they can sell for ever, but I am not moving forward,” he said.

Hirst, who is exhibiting 28 of his latest works in Mexico, said: “In England, if I did a show like this they would think, ‘Oh God, it is so obvious’.” His comments appear on The Art Newspaper’s website.

He first pickled a shark in 1991 and exhibited it in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997. Hirst sold it to Charles Saatchi for £50,000 before buying it back, only to sell it last year for £7m to Steve Cohen, the American financier.

Now, 15 years on, he has once again acquired a shark from Australia, although only 5ft compared with the 14ft original. Entitled The Wrath of God, it has been sold for £2.28m to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.

The museum has also bought a white dove in a tank for £1.7m from the exhibition. It is called The Inescapable Truth, with the soaring bird representing the ascension of Christ. The show, called The Death of God, has a religious theme to reflect the new-found faith of the former bad boy of British art.

South Korea is becoming a lucrative market for the artist, now 40. Kim Chang-il, owner of a shopping centre, has bought several Hirsts including Hymn, a huge bronze sculpture based on a children’s toy replica of a man’s body.

Hirst’s most expensive work at the exhibition in Mexico comprises three crucified sheep, skinned and split open with their necks broken so that their heads loll on their chests. Two bidders are vying to buy the work, called In the Name of the Father, at a cost of £5.7m.

In the past few days Hirst has sold three other works for a total of £2m to Jorge Vergara, a Mexican film producer.

Some of Hirst’s butterfly and spin paintings are in the show, too, as well as a few of his painted skulls. His spin paintings can fetch up to £300,000.

Frank Dunphy, Hirst’s business manager, says he expects to achieve a total of £24m sales from the exhibition. Dunphy insists that Hirst is not simply recycling his ideas: “Look, Damien likes doing sharks. And anyway it’s a different shark and a different tank and this new one is on a plinth.”

To his critics, Hirst has sold out. David Lee, editor of the Jackdaw art magazine, said: “Hirst is now merely a front man for an industry producing lines of merchandise.” He argues that the pickled animals have lost their capacity to surprise. “It was initially a good and original idea — at least in art terms — even if there are thousands of pickled dead animals in the Natural History Museum,” Lee said.

“Hirst is bound to say this new one has been done for artistic reasons. In fact he is simply capitalising on the idea.”

Some Mexican collectors initially expressed reservations about Hirst’s industrial production techniques. According to Hilario Galguera, the dealer showing the work, “one of the very big collectors was dubious about Hirst’s method of working with so many assistants. [He employs 20].

“I told him that Hirst supervised every detail and invited the collector to come to the gallery. When he arrived, he saw Damien taking a bird out of one of the tanks and cleaning it very carefully, then he retouched a detail on a painting. Damien is a perfectionist. If something is not quite right he destroys it.”

Hirst, who has three young children, has bought a house on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where he plans to live for about three months of the year.

Last year Hirst was named by Art Review magazine as the art world’s most influential person. It placed him ahead of his two dealers, Jay Jopling of White Cube in London, and Larry Gagosian who looks after his sales in America.

Both men may be wondering why Hirst decided to put on his new show in Mexico rather than London or New York. Dunphy said a Hirst exhibition expected in London this autumn had been delayed to June 2007.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Hirst conceded that he needed to reappraise his development as an artist. “Frank [Dunphy] always says that art should chase life while the art world chases money; if you start chasing money with art the whole thing is f*****,” he said.

“I think that is good advice. I have been closer than other artists to that. Too close for comfort sometimes. I think it comes from having no money when I was a child. From not having money for food and seeing my mum upset by that and having the electricity cut off. I am going to stop producing the kind of work I am making now.”

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