Updated Daily from the Island of Hydra Greece

Summer, 2001
Studio International 
paintings from the Ophiuchus Collection
Hydra, Greece

Collectors of contemporary art are not rare these days, it has become the 'cool' thing to do for everyone from dot.com entrepreneurs to fading movie stars. Corporations know that collecting art is a fast ticket to respectability, giving oil companies and banks a veneer of culture, a 'we care' human aspect.  All of this art they buy gets swallowed up into vaults or displayed on the walls of California's high security mansions. But if you are a genuine collector,  a devotee of art and a patron of artists in the true sense as were the Medici or the de Menils, then you love what you buy so much that you want to share it with everyone else. You want an extended audience to witness this art and to admire it too. This is the fifth year that Pauline Karpidas has displayed works of art from her private collection on Hydra. Ms Karpidas opened the gallery called 'Hydra Workshop' for the sole purpose of sharing her art.  Nothing is for sale and the space is not leased out for other commercial activities. Any big name in art today from Christopher Wool to Tracey Emin has featured at 'Hydra Workshop'. Nobody may find this remarkable until they reflect upon the location. A tiny Greek island with a population of under 3,000. 
Still not amazed? Then please write in hereand tell me another greek island with same? 
Look at this year's all woman line up : 
Joanne Greenbaum, Margherita Manzelli, Victoria Morton, Stephanie Pryor, Clare Woods. 
Manzelli is perhaps the brightest star of the group, having had her paintings appear on the cover of Flash Art and being included in the exhibition Painting at the Edge of the World, at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2001. The strange physiognomy of her female subjects has already become iconic. Sharing something of the bizarre characterization and subject matter combined with technical brilliance that Odd Nerdrum and John Currin are renowned for, Manzelli is quite simply "hot". The Opiuchus painting on show here entitled The City Loves You 1999, is a classic Manzelli. An elfin woman half reclines, half slumps against an over-sized sofa. Nothing remarkable in that until you look at her again. First glance sends signals that there is some erotic appeal in the finely built body, almost naked and the blonde hair striking against the black leather studded sofa. Second glance tells you that the woman is not pretty, that her breasts sag and that rather than slim she seems thin, unhealthy, her skin sallow. Sometimes, Manzelli's models have the same perverse appeal as one of  Egon Schiele's underfed adolescent waifs. 
It is the woman's face in The City Loves You that holds your attention, her features are almost hard to believe, an invention of the artist perhaps. However the gaze is so direct and normal that we have to ask the question "does somebody exist who really looks this bad?". Is the artist deliberately seeking models who do not meet the standards of beauty imposed by our times? Or is she exaggerating the model's more unusual features and challenging us to re-shape our ideals of beauty? The woman has the eyes of a 16th century Cranach, but art historians will tell you his Magdalenes and Lucretias were a "type" of female dreamed up by the artist rather than true portraits. Manzelli leaves us wondering if she is a modern day Cranach or not.
 

The Manzelli is certainly the most compelling in the group of just five paintings, all recent acquisitions by the Ophiuchus Collection. Clare Woods, who has been hand selected by the London art mafia appearing in Becks Futures at the ICA London last year and well on her way to BritArt stardom gives us Cold East 2001. Opaque enamels are splashed across a large black surface recalling Pollock's drip style. White paint criss-crossed on the top layer evokes the denuded twigs of a tree in winter. It is a good painting, but it is not a very original one. 
Five paintings to consider, five international artists to watch. All on Hydra till September 8th.

Catalogue Available

(Raichel Williamson)

FootNote : In what some view as "competition" to Hydra Workshop's exhibition but which would perhaps be best viewed as "in compliment to" the contemporary art selected by Pauline Karpidas is a worthwhile exhibition happening NOW at the1st Public School of Hydra. Called AURAS and AVATARS, it is curated by the Greek artist Dimitrios Georges Antonitsis, previously a curator for the Hydra Workshop. 

Read our REVIEW and see the ART HERE