“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
William Shakespeare - The Tempest
Punta della Dogana
Damien Hirst
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable
At
Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, until December 3, Damien Hirst’s ‘Treasures
from the Wreck of the Unbelievable' exhibition is curated by Elena Geuna, The
exhibition is displayed across 5,000 square meters of museum space and marks
the first time that Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, the two Venetian
venues of the Pinault Collection, are both dedicated to a single artist. Damien
Hirst’s most ambitious and complex project to date has been almost ten years in
the making. Exceptional in scale and scope, the exhibition tells the story of
the ancient wreck of a vast ship, the ‘Unbelievable’ (Apistos in the original Koine
Greek), and presents what was discovered of its precious cargo: the impressive
collection of Aulus Calidius Amotan – a freed slave better known as Cif Amotan
II – which was destined for a temple dedicated to the sun.
Above. Extraordinarily Large Museum Specimen of Giant Clam Shell - painted bronze.
The Warrior and the Bear – Bronze
Renowned for their formidable maternal instinct, bears roamed freely in ancient Greece and were regularly sacrificed to the goddess Artemis.
Cerberus
(Temple Ornament) – Bronze
The
sloping necks of this three-headed beast are suggestive of the anatomy of a
hyena.
A
collection of vessels from the wreck
of the
‘Unbelievable’
Tadukheba
- Carrara marble
copy of
an Egyptian bust the original is displayed in Palazzo Grassi
Aten - red marble, grey agate and gold leaf - detail
The practice of tattooing in Egypt
is in evidence from around 2000 BCE and was traditionally associated with
Nubian musicians and dancers.
The Severed Head of Medusa – Bronze
Medusa
personifies: horror, fear, sex, death, decapitation, female subjugation and
petrification. Once severed, her head retained extraordinary transformative
properties: Ovid relayed that it was Medusa’s blood, dripping from her
neck onto twigs
and seaweed strands, and still harboring the power
of
petrification, that accounted for the existence of coral.
Sphinx – Carrara marble
Sphinx – Bronze
Sphinx,
featuring the prostrate body of a lion paired with the torso and crowned head
of a woman, this sculpture amalgamates aspects of the Egyptian sphinx –
associated with male kingship and the solar deity – with the Graeco-Roman
concept of a winged female creature: alluring, cunning and often malevolent.
The Severed Head of The Medusa – crystal glass
Remnants of Apollo - limestone
The wrinkled mouse serves to identify this
vast sculptural fragment as part of an Apollonian effigy. The Iliad describes
how the deity Apollo Smintheus – ‘Lord of Mice’ – brought retribution or
punishment by disease. The awkward later addition of the god’s stone ear to the
spine of the rodent may attest to locally held beliefs concerning a hybrid
human-animal creature or totemic deity.
Grecian Nude – bronze + pink marble
+ bronze
Five Grecian Nudes – pink marble
Photograph and copyright by Manfredi
Bellati
Palazzo Grassi
Damien Hirst
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable
Demon with Bowl (Exhibition
Enlargement) - Painted resin
Standing at
just over eighteen meters, this monumental figure is a copy of a smaller bronze
recovered from the wreckage. The discovery of the statue appeared to solve the
mystery of a disembodied bronze head with saurian features excavated in the
Tigris Valley in 1932. Characterized by monstrous gaping jaws and bulbous eyes,
the head was initially identified as Pazuzu, the Babylonian ‘king of the wind
demons’. …
The exhibition continues……
…