London Arts & Letters  

Latest Posts  |  Archive  | 

Irresistible and Repellent: Marc Quinn at White Cube

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 24 Jan 2008 at 7:04 PM

Print

Send

RSS

Share:

The artist behind the beautiful armless sculpture of a pregnant Alison Lapper that decked Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth beginning in 2005, Marc Quinn, opened his new show tonight at White Cube gallery. On the top floor, the likes of Paul McCartney were seen strolling among Quinn's burnished bronze plants and bright botanical paintings. The flower sculptures — including cherry, banana, and orchid plants — were cast in bronze and then given a heat-treated, chrome-plated finish. The result is part gorgeous, part grotesque as the clash between nature and artificiality is unavoidable and strident. The collection is a demonstration of Mr. Quinn's morbid interest in our ever-less-natural relationship with the food sources we depend on. His 2000 installation, "Garden," featured thousands of frozen flowers in impossibly perfect containment.

Downstairs was an even more startling work called "Evolution" — nine marble statues showing the maturation of the human fetus, each the size of an adult. Mr. Quinn was inspired to create this irresistible, but also somewhat repellent, series in fleshy marble after noting the revulsion caused by his statues of limbless people.

This is an exhibit both serious and beautiful and confirms Mr. Quinn as one of the UK's leading lights.

London Arts & Letters Homepage