By Nancy Nesvet Venice, Italy - Damien Hirst’s “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable” installation, on view at Palazzo Grassi and Villa Doghana, Venice’s Customs House, is one of the Venice Biennial 2017’s most wildly popular exhibits. Following 10 years of work and thousands of euros of investors’ money, Hirst presents a fictional rescue of artifacts from the ship, Apistos (Kona Greek for Unbelievable). Hirst’s storyline: a freed slave, Cif Amoton II, the letters of whose name rearrange to read “I am fiction” lived during the late first and early second centuries A.D., amassed a fortune, then bought and loaded statues and reproductions of ancient art and crafts pieces onto a ship bound for the Temple of the Sun, which he built. Hirst’s story continues with the fictional sinking of the ship in the Indian Ocean 5,000 meters under the seabed off East Africa, and its videoed … [Read more...] about Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable at the Venice Biennial 2017