MARC QUINN
On 4 May 2013, Mary Boone Gallery will open at its Chelsea location All the Time in the World, an exhibition of four new large-scale bronze sculptures and one oil-on-canvas work by MARC QUINN. Part of the artist’s The Archaeology of Art series, the sculptures take the form of finely detailed seashells that highlight the beautiful, symmetrical and yet perfectly natural forms which, almost implausibly, are made by forces of nature at the bottom of the sea. Quinn says, “To me, looking at these natural forms is like looking at the archaeology of art.”
According to Quinn, the form of the shell is like a found structural diagram of how the present becomes the past, with the rings on the outside of the shell suggesting the past and a polished reflective front showing the present. With these sculptures, the artist is able to collaborate with creatures from the beginning of time, and the beginning of art, and therefore somehow making the shells a part of the space-time continuum.
Through the use of state-of-the-art technology, Quinn is able to create exact scaled models, which are used for the casting of the bronze sculptures. The process begins by selecting real shells from nature, which are then scanned with a digital 3D scanner. That code is then converted into a digital 3D map and outputted to a 3D printer, which produces the shell model to be cast in bronze. Consequently, Quinn’s shell sculptures are born much in the same way that an organism uses its DNA to reproduce.
The exhibition at 541 West 24 Street will run through 29 June 2013.
In addition to the show at Mary Boone Gallery, a major exhibition of Quinn’s work titled Marc Quinn will open to the public on 29 May 2013 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, in tandem with the inauguration of the 55th Venice Biennale. Curated by Germano Celant, this solo show includes more than 50 works – sculptures, paintings and other art objects – as well as the public debut of more than 15 new works. The exhibition runs until 29 September 2013 and will be one of the artists’ most important exhibitions to date. A press preview for this exhibition will be held in Venice on 28 May 2013.
