Marc Quinn (b. 1964)
Marc Quinn was born in London in 1964, where he continues to work and live. He studied History and Art History at Robinson College, Cambridge and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan. Quinn began exhibiting his own art in the early 1990s and holds the distinction of being the first artist represented by Jay Jopling, owner of the highly esteemed London Gallery, White Cube.
Quinn’s work gained international attention when it was exhibited as part of Charles Saatchi’s Sensation exhibition in 1997. The show opened at London’s Royal Academy of Art and later toured to Berlin and New York. It featured a group of artists known as Young British Artists (or YBAs for short), whose work was notable for its often shocking subject matter. Quinn’s contribution was memorable: a self-portrait sculpture made out of the artist’s frozen blood. Titled Self, Quinn continues to remake the piece every five years.
Quinn’s website states that his “wide-ranging oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual.”
His “sculpture, paintings 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….Other key themes in his work include genetic modification and hybridism…Quinn has also explored the potential artistic uses of DNA, making a portrait of a sitter by extracting strands of DNA and placing it in a test-tube….Quinn’s diverse and poetic work meditates on our attempts to understand or overcome the transience of human life through scientific knowledge and artistic expression.”
Marc Quinn has exhibited in many important group and solo exhibitions internationally including Sonsbeek ’93, Arnhem (1993), Give and Take, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2001), Statements 7, 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and Gwangju Biennale (2004). Solo exhibitions include Tate Gallery, London (1995), Kunstverein Hannover (1999), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2000), Tate Liverpool (2002), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2004), Groninger Museum, Groningen (2006) and MACRO, Rome (2006), DHC/ART Fondation pour l’art contemporain, Montréal (2007) and Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009).”