Marc Quinn
Recent werk - Recent Sculpture

Design: Rudo Menge, Illustrated (colour), Paperback, sewn, 144 pages, Size: 22 x 24 cm
Dutch/English edition, ISBN 90-5662-511-X / 978-90-5662-511-5, € 30.00 OUT OF PRINT

In association with the Groninger Museum, Groningen

Exhibition Groninger Museum, Groningen, 29 April - 27 August 2006

The British artist Marc Quinn (b. 1964) came to the attention of the international art scene in 1991 with Self, a cast of his own head realized in eight pints of his own frozen blood that he exhibited in a specially designed refrigeration unit.

Since 1999, Quinn has been realizing sculptures of people who lack one or more limbs in classic white marble. This striking series reveals a profound social engagement and, among other things, is an appeal for the emancipation of disabled people. In 2005, his larger-than-life marble sculpture of Alison Lapper, limbless and pregnant, was unveiled on Trafalgar Square in London.

The counterpart to this series of sculptures is the Chemical Life Support series, after models whose disability is not immediately evident, though they are suffering from a chronic disease and would not survive without medication. Each of these sculptures is realized in polymer wax mixed with the subject's life-sustaining medication.

In addressing the purely physical aspects of life, Quinn confronts the viewer with the gaping chasm between the physical and the mental, beauty and ugliness, the eternal and the mortal. His work has been presented and acquired by leading galleries and museums around the world. The Groninger Museum presents the first large-scale retrospective of Quinn's work in summer 2006.