Young British Artist Marc Quinn first came to prominence in 1991 when he exhibited Self, the now infamous sculpture of his head cast entirely out of his own frozen blood, which was bought by Charles Saatchi. Marc Quinn’s sculpture, paintings, prints and drawings often deal with the distanced relationship we have with our bodies, highlighting how the conflict between the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ has a grip on the contemporary psyche. Marc Quinn is also well known for his flower works such as In the Night Garden and Winter Garden as well as for sculptures Evolution, Alison Lapper Pregnant and Kate Moss works Sphinx and Siren.
Key themes in Marc Quinn’s work include genetic modification and hybridism represented by the frozen garden he made for Miuccia Prada in 2000, installed at Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy. This was a whole garden full of plants which could never grow together kept in cryogenic suspension.
Other key works by Marc Quinn include the artists’ portrait of John E. Sulston, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for sequencing the human genome on the Human Genome Project. This work is in the National Portrait Gallery and consists of bacteria containing Sulston's DNA in agar jelly. Marc 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 his 15 ton marble statue Alison Lapper Pregnant which was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Marc Quinn has made numerous studies of the supermodel Kate Moss including Sphinx, a sculpture of Kate Moss in a yoga position with her ankles and arms wrapped behind her ears. In 2008, Quinn unveiled another sculpture of Kate Moss, this time in solid 18 carat gold, called Siren, which was exhibited in the British Museum, London and sold for $1.2 million in auction at Sotheby’s in May 2011.
In June 2001 Marc Quinn won the Royal Academy's £25,000 Charles Wollaston prize for the most distinguished work in the summer exhibition. Marc Quinn has exhibited all over the world with exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, London, the Kunstverein Hannover, the Fondazione Prada, Milan, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Tate Liverpool.
Buy signed limited edition prints, sculptures and original artworks by Marc Quinn at Opus Fine Art; the home of Contemporary art.