| Marc Quinn |
| Biography |
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Marc Quinn born 1964 London. He studied history and the history of art
at Cambridge University and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry
Flanagan. He was not represented in the 1988 Damien Hirst-curated
Freeze exhibition which brought the YBAs together for the first time
(although he did at one time share a flat with Hirst). Quinn emerged in
the early 1990s. He was the first artist represented by Jay Jopling, and
was exhibited in Charles Saatchi's defining Sensation exhibition of
1997, which gave establishment endorsement to the movement.
Quinn's signature piece in the art world is self (1991, a frozen
sculpture of the artists head made from 4.5 litres (9.5 US pints) of the
artist's own frozen blood taken from his body over a period of five
months. Self, like many other pieces by the YBAs, was bought by
Charles Saatchi (in 1991 for a reputed £13,000). The press reported in
2002 that the sculpture had been destroyed by builders employed to
expand the kitchen for Saatchi's partner, the celebrity chef Nigella
Lawson, when they unplugged the freezer in which it was being stored (it
has to be kept at -12C/10F). This would seem to have been unfounded,
however, as the piece was exhibited intact by Saatchi when he opened his
new gallery in London in 2003. In April, 2005, self was sold to a US
collector £1.5m. His Next important piece in terms of public
profile was the frozen garden he made for Miuccia Prada in the year
2000.A whole Garden full of plants which could never grow together kept
in cryogenic suspension "Garden" seems to anticipate many of the
environmental themes whic have become so important in the last few
years. Quinn has also made a series of Marble sculptures of people
either born with limbs missing or who have had them amputated.This
culminated in the 15 ton Marble statue of Alison Lapper a woman who was
born with no arms and severely shortened legs which sits on the 4th
plinth in Trafalgar Square in London. His portrait of John
Sulston, who won the Nobel prize for sequencing the human genome on the
Human Genome Project, is in the National Portrait Gallery. It consists
of bacteria containing Sulston's DNA in agar jelly. Since 2005
Quinn has become known to the general public for his sculpture of Alison
Lapper, which is on prominent display on a plinth in Trafalgar Square in
front of the National Gallery. In April 2006, Sphinx, a sculpture
of Kate Moss by Quinn was revealed. The sculpture shows Moss in a yoga
position with her ankles and arms wrapped behind her ears. This body of
work culminated in an exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York
in may 2007.
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| Marc Quinn Untitled from The Winter Garden Series 2004 Pigment print on watercolour paper ed 100 58x40 £600 framed SOLD |
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