Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn is a multimedia artist whose sculptures, paintings, and drawings often deal with the relationship we have with our bodies. Particularly, Quinn works in the context of the conflict between ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ in the modern psyche. He gets a lot of his inspiration from ideas of sexuality. Quinn’s work ranges drastically in medium using anything from his own blood and feces to steel and bronze. One of his more costly mediums has been 18 carat gold. The artist carved a solid life size statue out of it to create Siren, a statue of Kate Moss. Referencing her iconic image and our praise of celebrities, Quinn relates her representation to that of the ancient Greeks and her praise like that of ancient Egyptian gods. This is what he said about the piece:

"The mask of Tutankhamen is one of the first artworks ever I remember seeing – it was in the early 1970s in the British Museum show, and that was one of the inspirations of this work as well. Like that mask, Siren is an image that glows and gives out love and light but remains completely implacable and silent. I think of both of them as sculptures of a cultural superego."

Siren, 2008, solid Gold, approx. life size

X-ray Eye (MQ290R), 2011, Oil on canvas, 290H x 290W cms

Planet, 2008, painted bronze and steel, 398H x 926W x 353D cms