Nobody Does It Better

Roy Lichtenstein Ashley Bickerton Kara Walker Jeff Koons Matthew Barney Maurizio Cattelan Thomas Struth Robert Gober

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The annual Joannou tradition has longer legs this year than in past, thanks to the debut of Slaughterhouse, a new DESTE Foundation project space on Hydra, the fabled Greek island two hours by hydrofoil from Athens. ARTINFO took a trip out to Hydra for the space’s inauguration on Tuesday with the Bahrain women; a flock of artists including Sue Webster, Tim Noble, Bickerton, Cattelan, Fischer, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wekua, and probably the ghost of Duchamp; and a coven of major art collectors and advisers, from Miami’s Don and Mera Rubell to New Yorker dealer Jeffrey Deitch, a longtime Joannou adviser.

The space is located in a former slaughterhouse where the island’s goats would meet their fate. Local legend has it that the blood of the animals coursed down a long funnel to the sea below, attracting sharks who slurped up the runoff. That history, plus the myths of Artemis and her golden bow, sunken ships, buried treasure, and local religious lore, gave Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton, who kicked off the space with a first-time collaboration, plenty of raw material to work with.

“Blood of Two: Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton” unfolded with a dawn procession attended by several hundred bleary-eyed pilgrims, including Thomas Struth, who photographed the unfolding Fellini/Bergman/Tarkovsky–like scene from a death-defying, rocky outcropping overlooking Mandraki Bay in the beautiful Aegean Sea. In the almost hallucinatory early light, a fishing boat outfitted with a hoist and black-suited divers brought up a sunken bronze vitrine/sculpture, which contained reliquary-like drawings made by Barney and Peyton.

In reference to the islands' annual Easter rituals, in which an icon representing Christ is carried into the sea, at least six local stevedores took over, grunting their way up ancient steps with the table-sized sculpture  (a punishing route from the sea to the roadside) and meeting up with the bedazzled, or hungover, foreign assembly.

In carefully orchestrated movements, a tarp was unfolded, and the not-so-fresh corpse of a dogfish, actually a small type of shark that travels in a packs, was placed on top of the sculpture and lashed down.

The procession then continued to the Slaughterhouse, where the sculpture was installed and its elaborate fittings removed for viewing. The dogfish, smelling oh so foul, was later roasted on a spit almost beyond recognition. Surely (or one hopes) no one dared eat it. The exhibition runs until spring 2010. Suffice it to say that more will be heard about the Slaughterhouse, which DESTE is rumored to have leased from the Hydra municipality for 30 years.

A bit later, Joannou and his wife, Lietta, hosted a grand breakfast celebrating the new project in their Hydra summer home, high over the protected harbor. Like his boat named “The Guilty,” which is tied up in the harbor below and boasts an exterior designed and painted by Koons as an homage to Roy Lichtenstein, the Hydra home is filled with smaller-scale works by some of Joannou’s favorite artists, including a suite of 40 lithographs by Noble and Webster in the master bedroom that interpret The Joy of Sex, the classic ’70s best seller.

As the guests filtered out, the sights and sounds of the Slaughterhouse procession faded, and the normal retinue of sun-worshipping and sea-seeking tourists once again took over.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.