artnet News | Hettie Judah:
Damien Hirst has created the exhibition the post-truth world deserves. “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,” showing concurrently at both of the Pinault Foundation’s spaces in Venice, is a labyrinthine, multi-layered concoction bringing together stories, objects, film, and photographs, all of them dubious—deliberately, teasingly so.
Like many good dramas, “Treasures” comes with a backstory: the remains of a ship, sunk some 2,000 years ago off the coast of East Africa. The property of a remarkable collector—a freed slave, no less—named Cif Amotan II, the vessel was carrying a vast art collection containing artifacts from every civilization then known, transporting it to a museum island where they would be placed on show… Read more
Image: A sculpture called Hydra and Kali is pictured during the press presentation of the exhibition ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’ by British artist Damien Hirst at the Pinault Collection in Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice on April 6, 2017. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images