Jeff Koons on Hydra: “Apollo” – culture

If on Hydra in the harbor a yacht painted in pop art style called guilty anchored right next to the donkeys, then it’s: Art Basel, bathing suit edition. At the invitation of this ship’s owner, billionaire Deste Foundation founder Dakis Joannou, the whole colorful Art World is here to celebrate themselves and a bit of the artist exhibiting at the Foundation’s island branch. Hydra, of course that makes sense for something like this. The small island has been the getaway for intellectuals and artists since the 1930s. Fashion people have been vacationing here for a long time, but: A Dior bag would be frowned upon here, you are not on Mykonos. The opening of the exhibition Deste Foundation is the “event of the year” for all the artists who have set up their studios in Piraeus in recent years. Piraeus, the port city that most people only associate with ferry madness, is ultimately the new Berlin. Google is here now, and galleries from London have their branches here. Before the pandemic, Kiki Smith was one of the big stars for whom all museum directors, gallery owners and artists traveled to Hydra. Back then, you ate at a set dinner with a strict guest list. But this year’s name is the artist jeff koons, and that’s why everything is different, for many reasons. It starts with the fact that his project “Jeff Koons: Apollo” has been postponed twice due to the pandemic.

Transparency is the key word

Koons is the first artist that Cypriot building contractor Joannou bought in the 1980s. And Koons is the artist who designed his colorful yacht. For island purists, this flashy ship is a nuisance because it spoils the view. But up close, how it’s anchored there next to the donkeys, it’s somehow pretty great. The yacht is small by billionaire standards, and with its huge angular windows, it’s so transparent that any sandaled tourist can admire the comic-like interior murals up close. This yacht is neither serious nor mysterious. She is transparent. And transparency is also the key word for this year’s art happening. It’s not an exclusive event for the small circle of arty people. Koons’ work of art for Hydra, one suspects immediately, is there for everyone, just like the artist himself.

When the man designs for BMW Art Cars and seriously says sentences like: “As soon as you get in, you can feel the energy of this superhero car. It literally shoots through your veins,” you want to sigh very loudly. Sure, the American is the highest paid artist in the world. Sure, this suit-wearing ex-Wall Street broker is about money – a lot of money – doesn’t he have to support over 130 assistants? But it could all be completely different. Koons knows so much, about the Renaissance and about Marcel Duchamp. The other day, in the madam For example: “Through him I have learned to ignore the physical in my work. This allows me to concentrate on the triggering moment that created this object.” What does that mean, one might ask. But after a certain superstar status, no one dares to ask.

That’s why it’s so complicated with Koons, which you quickly learn as an art world newbie with sunset and wine: you can’t officially find him great, because balloon dogs weighing tons and dinosaur-sized west highland terriers with flowers border on the corrupt. This is how the art critic of the new Yorker, Jerry Saltz, was also forced to tweet on Hydra: “This is Jeff Koons artwork. I like it. Sue me.” On the other hand, there is a lot of admiration for the American in the shimmering air. Because what Koons has mastered to perfection, the bubbly self-marketing, is practiced by the next generation right here.

In order to observe this, one only has to Hydra Four Seasons (that’s not luxurious Four Seasons is, but only called that) stay on a beach lounger and wear large sunglasses. The vibe is great because the big deals were made at Art Basel, so now it’s easy to chill here with a little Gaga art conversation. “Wow” is a word you can always throw in. And to classify a young Greek artist, the sentence helps: really serious and unpretentious work. Smoking Berlin art star Michael Müller lies next to an elderly London gallery owner who goes swimming in his underpants and then makes a very loud phone call, and an Australian hotel designer wants to recruit a young artist from Los Angeles for a project that he, of course, experience names. The mood is swimming trunks and excited at the same time, you are introduced and dragged along the whole time. A beautiful dress is enough for that, the art world also likes to have it simply beautiful.

Koons looks you in the eye and raves about Albert Camus

But as I said: this year everything is different. Later, when the well-dressed crowd made the pilgrimage from the port in the direction of the artwork, the path was lined with metre-long vegetarian souvlaki buffets. There’s wine from cardboard canisters and a DJ who fills the entire harbor with music. Art is for everyone. Koons is for everyone. This is koonst!

So while you stroll along the cliff in a good mood and inclusive alongside older gentlemen with round glasses (museum directors), Issey Miyake suspenders (gallerists), beautiful young women in colorful dresses (cotton!) and a few heavily lifted ladies (heiresses). one rolls one’s eyes again at the title of the work of art. Apollo. Can it be even more obvious in a country where almost every island has the remains of ancient temples to Apollo? And then you turn the corner and look directly into the glowing face of a golden giant sun, whose rays turn powerfully like a mill. It is enthroned on the old slaughterhouse, the summer branch of the Deste Foundation, and looks like kitsch digitally photoshopped into the panorama. Again, from afar: a nuisance. Up close: kinda great. The small slaughterhouse itself is not accessible at first. But that’s great again. Because the colorful art people queue has to wait for entry at a reasonable distance and stares at the huge sun, which in turn stares at the setting sun. It’s insanely serious and insanely funny at the same time, a beautiful act of worship. Inside, that is, under the sun, these beautiful people, of whom one recognizes very few because they are all kissed so golden by the sun – for example, superstar Maurizio Cattelan or the gallery owner Thaddaeus Ropac – become a brightly painted statue of Apollo with a snake admire, in front of a pair of painted sneakers.

But who is the god that everyone worships? Is that Jeff Koons or Apollo? When the sun has set and one of these gods descends towards the harbor party, the sea of ​​people does not divide. It is a well-known fact that real gods mingle with the people. Jeff Koons walks down the mountain, shakes hands obligingly and allows himself to be questioned as he runs. He tells about the original of the Apollo statue in London in the British Museum, which he was allowed to scan. He looks you in the eye and raves about Camus and his concept of light, saying it’s all illusion and the most profound thing he’s ever read. And then you ask him about the orientation of the sun over his Apollo, and if that is as mathematically complicated as it used to be with the Apollo temples of the ancient Greeks, and he says: I have no idea. The whole thing lasts four minutes, then he says thank you and disappears back into the sea of ​​people, on the one hand you are very divinely touched by so much seriousness and on the other hand you are left behind in a hilarious way with a huge: Huh?. That you then try to declutter with other people like the digital artist Elliot Woods, one half of the Korean artist duo Kimchi and Chips. Her installation “Another Moon” has just been shown at the Zollverein in Essen: an installation that collects sunlight via solar cells and then sends it back into the sky at night, a fascinating approach to the subject of the sun. But Essen isn’t Hydra, and Elliot Woods isn’t Jeff Koons. So there is dancing. And discussed. Isn’t the British Museum an elegant nod to London, where the Parthenon sculptures that Lord Elgin stole from Athens 200 years ago are not wanted to be handed over to Greece? Is Apollo not the god who brings epidemics to the people, but also the protector of refugees and the arts? In the end, is there maybe a lot of meaning in this small stone house on the cliffs of Hydra? But maybe meaning is completely meaningless in the end? At the end of this art happening, you sit on the steps in front of the pirate bar, slightly drunk, and on the guilty finds, which one can see because of the closeness to the people, disappointingly that there is no afterparty. The patron of the arts may be cool, but he’s already 80. A lonely elderly man in a suit politely asks if we could step aside for a moment. It’s a man coming home from work. It is Jeff Koons, completely unadorned, who climbs the steps. Even gods have to go to bed at some point.