ART CITIES:London-Marc Quinn

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Marc Quinn, almost after 25 years after his notorious first sculpture “Self”, a self-portrait he made in 1991 from his own frozen blood, has become one of the most long-term images of the Young British Artists. His answer in the question if he is bothered when the public don’t like his artworks, is: “Maybe they will in five years. That’s the good thing about art, it lasts”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

As a result of two years investigation into natural phenomena and our distanced and complex relationship with the environment, he exhibits two new bodies of works “The Toxic Sublime” and “Frozen Waves” under the title “The Toxic Sublime” in the White Cube Gallery. The core of the exhibition are the series of paintings “The Toxic Sublime”, they started as photographs of a sunset that he took while he was at his second home in the Caribbean. The paintings are distorted, three-dimensional seascapes that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. After printing the sunset on canvas he applied colors, stuck on tape usually used to mend holes in airplanes and took the canvas outside to grind the impression of drains and pavement onto its surface. Finally, he bonded these degraded seascapes to a sheet of aluminum, which was pummeled and bent out of shape, to create sculptural hybrid objects that not only exhibit the formal elements of classical landscape painting but also are suggestive of something wrecked, as if a pictorial remnant discarded from some kind of physical disaster. According to Quinn, the series is meant as some kind of comment on the way we’ve become divorced from nature and the environment. “Frozen waves” is a new series of seven sculptures derived from sea shells and created through 3D printing. Quinn’s process involved copying, enlarging them to diverse sizes and casting in concrete and stainless steel. They’re based on the shape a shell takes once it has been worn away by the sea. In the moment before they disappear, all fragments of shells end up in a similar form, an arch that looks like a wave, as though an unwitting self-portrait by nature. The results appear like a sculpture of a wave or an ancient ruin, is a reminder that the forces that shape nature are more powerful and will last longer than us.

Info: The Toxic Sublime, White Cube Gallery, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London, Duration: 15/7-13/9/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 10:00-18:00, Sun: 12:00-18:00, http://whitecube.com

Marc Quinn, The Toxic Sublime - B(=/cUo-214!96c, 2014, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube
Marc Quinn, The Toxic Sublime – B(=/cUo-214!96c, 2014, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube

 

 

04Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Ultra Gravity, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube
Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Energy, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube

 

 

05Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Ultra Mass, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube
Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Ultra Mass, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube

 

 

06 Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Ultra Mass, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube
Marc Quinn, The Conservation of Ultra Mass, 2015, © Marc Quinn. Photo © Marc Quinn Studio Courtesy White Cube