The Greek Gift
DESTE Foundation
2022
Due to COVID-19, a special project by Jeff Koons commissioned for the DESTE Foundation’s space in Hydra, Greece, had to be postponed. Instead, a group of artists and friends of Dakis Joannou and the Foundation have come together to organize a small group show.
Coordinated by Massimiliano Gioni, The Greek Gift brought together a series of new works, alongside found objects and impromptu responses from a variety of artists who have maintained decades-long relationships with Dakis Joannou and the DESTE Foundation.
The exhibition borrows its title from a chess move called the “Greek gift sacrifice”, for which a player sacrifices a bishop in order to checkmate, in turn is believed to have been named after the mythical gift of the Trojan Horse from the Achaeans to the city of Troy.
As in a chess game, several artists have been invited to “make a move” by selecting artworks and objects from the collection; in response, Joannou and Gioni countered by choosing other pieces, and by doing so setting in motion a series of chain reactions between artworks—a domino effect of intense proximities.
The book’s square format pages alternates between black and a white, showcasing the proposed back-and-forth conversation. The middle section displays the works in the exhibition setting at the DESTE old slaughterhouse in Hydra.
Artists include Marcel Duchamp, Pawel Althamer, Matthew Barney, Elizabeth Peyton, Maurizio Cattelan, Jeff Koons, David Shrigley, Urs Fischer, Kiki Smith, and Jenny Holzer.
Coordinated by Massimiliano Gioni, The Greek Gift brought together a series of new works, alongside found objects and impromptu responses from a variety of artists who have maintained decades-long relationships with Dakis Joannou and the DESTE Foundation.
The exhibition borrows its title from a chess move called the “Greek gift sacrifice”, for which a player sacrifices a bishop in order to checkmate, in turn is believed to have been named after the mythical gift of the Trojan Horse from the Achaeans to the city of Troy.
As in a chess game, several artists have been invited to “make a move” by selecting artworks and objects from the collection; in response, Joannou and Gioni countered by choosing other pieces, and by doing so setting in motion a series of chain reactions between artworks—a domino effect of intense proximities.
The book’s square format pages alternates between black and a white, showcasing the proposed back-and-forth conversation. The middle section displays the works in the exhibition setting at the DESTE old slaughterhouse in Hydra.
Artists include Marcel Duchamp, Pawel Althamer, Matthew Barney, Elizabeth Peyton, Maurizio Cattelan, Jeff Koons, David Shrigley, Urs Fischer, Kiki Smith, and Jenny Holzer.
Slippurinn: Recipes and Stories from Iceland
Phaidon Press
2021
This debut book by Icelandic chef Gísli Matt, who built his restaurant Slippurinn in a historic shipyard building of the Vestmannaeyjar island. The island’s landscape was changed forever by the lava flow from a 1973 erupted volcano.
Gísli created a menu that reflects his extensive research into traditional Icelandic dishes to preserve local culinary knowledge while applying a modern approach for a cuisine.
The Icelandic landscape has the most out of this world color palette. The gradient on the book’s cover is an attempt to recreate that in print.
Gísli’s complex multi-part recipes needed a layout solution that individually binds the ingredients and the preparations for each part of the dish, while still keeping the recipe as a whole.
Gísli created a menu that reflects his extensive research into traditional Icelandic dishes to preserve local culinary knowledge while applying a modern approach for a cuisine.
The Icelandic landscape has the most out of this world color palette. The gradient on the book’s cover is an attempt to recreate that in print.
Gísli’s complex multi-part recipes needed a layout solution that individually binds the ingredients and the preparations for each part of the dish, while still keeping the recipe as a whole.
Published by the Vitra Design Museum, the Atlas of Furniture Design is an in-depth history of modern furniture design from the late 18th century until today, featuring 1,740 objects, spanning over 1,028 pages, and covering four epochs in modern furniture design history, starting in 1780 until the present day.
The museum's immense furniture collection is the foundation for this book, which took over 20 years to research. This project required an intuitive way-finding system. The solution was a cross referencing system of color-coded dots and object numbers to allow the reader to easily navigate through the atlas. The colors represent the different typologies of furniture in the book.
The system appears in all sections of the books - in object texts, infographics, and a large range of endmatter materials and indexes.
Much of the high volume information in the book is presented by numerous infographics spreads, providing multiple overviews on political and cultural events, styles and movements, as well as techniques and materials that changed and influenced furniture design throughout history.
The museum's immense furniture collection is the foundation for this book, which took over 20 years to research. This project required an intuitive way-finding system. The solution was a cross referencing system of color-coded dots and object numbers to allow the reader to easily navigate through the atlas. The colors represent the different typologies of furniture in the book.
The system appears in all sections of the books - in object texts, infographics, and a large range of endmatter materials and indexes.
Much of the high volume information in the book is presented by numerous infographics spreads, providing multiple overviews on political and cultural events, styles and movements, as well as techniques and materials that changed and influenced furniture design throughout history.
For the exhibition Ametria curator Roberto Cuoghi collected art pieces and artifacts from the Benaki Museum in Athens, and paired them together with pieces from the contemporary collection of Dakis Joannau of the DESTE Foundation, to create a radical exercise in the de-canonization of the curatorial method. The maze-like structure of the show enabled endless navigation paths, resulting in different experiences for each visitor. The installation was composed out of rigidly arranged rectangular black boxes, lit from their bottoms, and the objects were presented on or inside them, without titles or captions, creating an even more challenging and solitary experience. The catalogue follows the documentation of the exhibition and replicates the displays 1:1 two-dimensionally on its black pages. The book block is covered completely in deep black, except a hint of light from the bottom page edges. Each copy was carefully hand sprayed in an auto body shop.
Breuer
Phaidon Press
2016
The most comprehensive book on architect and designer Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), looking in detail at all the houses, furniture, and public buildings he designed In Europe and the United States–from his beginning at the Bauhaus through his collaboration with Walter Gropius, and the establishment of his own practice in the USA.
The case of this hardcover volume is made out of a through-dyed, thermo-reactive paper that gives the impression of concrete, with the type and cover elements screen-printed in white.
The case of this hardcover volume is made out of a through-dyed, thermo-reactive paper that gives the impression of concrete, with the type and cover elements screen-printed in white.