ROME, ITALY.- Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma is devoting a large solo exhibition – the first in a public Italian museum – to British artist Marc Quinn (London, 1964). The exhibition, which is curated by Danilo Eccher and Achille Bonito Oliva, brings together more than thirty recent works, from the sculptures in the Complete Marbles series to more recent creations under the title of Chemical Life Support. But there are also paintings and drawings, revealing the variety of techniques and expressive registers adopted by the artist in his wide range of activities.

Marc Quinn first attracted international attention in the early 1990s, when he presented Self (1991), This was a self-portrait in which the artist sculpted his own head using five litres of his own blood – frozen in order to keep the sculpture together. The power of expression and the sensational nature of the work brought it into the current known as Young British Art. But his studies soon shifted away from that artistic environment towards a profound investigation of some particular themes, such as the human body and its mechanisms of survival, life and its preservation, beauty and death.

Directly linked to his debut sculpture Self (shown here in a more recent version, of 2001) a work entitled Sky (2006) is on show in the MACRO galleries. As he had already done for his son Lucas, Quinn used placenta and the umbilical cord of his second son to model a portrait of the child’s head. Here too a refrigeration system ensures the conservation of this fragile effigy, which is suspended between the still pulsating life of the organs that enabled its growth, and a cold presentation like that of a scientific laboratory.

The theme of the body, viewed as a system of vital organs and ideal images, is also the starting point for a series of sculptures called Chemical Life Support. Here, the artist has depicted the bodies of people who need special medicines in order to survive. These “chemical supports” are mixed up in wax, a malleable and translucent material that brings to life some very unusual sculptural portraits: the exhibition includes Innoscience (2004), amongst others, in which the body of the artist’s son is modelled out of the artificial milk that nourished him during the first months of his life, and Nicholas Grogan – Insulin (Diabetes) (2005), in which the figure of a diabetic man is impregnated with the chemical substance that compensates this metabolic dysfunction. The problem of disease forms the dark side of sculptures in which the human body appears in all its fragile beauty, balanced between the ideal nature of its form and its carnal weakness.

This encounter between conflicting values can also be seen in the series entitled The Complete Marbles, which portray people affected by serious malformations and physical handicaps. Marc Quinn uses these unique models to represent the beauty inherent in their bodies, which, sculpted as they are in the classic material of marble and captured with absolute naturalness in their nudity, recall the mutilated masterpieces of ancient sculpture. This can be seen in Peter Hull (1999) and Alexandra Westmoquette (2000), which are but two of the works on show at MACRO. The artist’s investigations of these themes meant that he was directly measuring himself up against monumental sculpture. The large work installed in September 2005 on one of the plinths at the centre of Trafalgar Square in London, Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005), brings to its conclusion the studies that started with The Complete Marbles and, in the words of the artist, it offers “a new model of female heroism”.

The same can be said for the work on show – Sphinx (2005). Top model Kate Moss, one of the icons of modern beauty, is shown in an original yoga position, acquiring the appearance of a heroic, totemic, almost otherworldly figure. Apart from the theme of life, with its mechanisms and codes (Quinn uses genetics in many works, such as in DNA Garden (2001)), it is also the prospect of death and the hereafter that inspires the work of this British artist. The two bronze skeletons seen praying, Waiting for God (2006) and Waiting for Godot (2006), appear to turn their eyes to the destiny of death of each human being but also to the expectation and hope of a life after death, of another world to commit oneself to.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by Electa, Milan, with essays by Danilo Eccher and Achille Bonito Oliva, and with an interview with artist Rod Mengham.

Marc Quinn was born in 1964 in London, where he lives and works. He made his debut in 1988 with the “Bronze Sculpture” solo exhibition at the Jay Jopling/Otis Gallery in London. In 1990, he presented “Bread Sculpture” at the Middendorf Gallery in Washington and exhibited at the Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt in Paris. In 1991 his activities continued with the “Self” exhibition at the Jay Jopling/Grob Gallery in London. In 1992 he was in Sydney, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with “The Boundary Rider. 9th Biennale of Sydney”. The famous “Young British Artists II” at the Saatchi Gallery in London came in 1993. In 1994 the British Museum put on “Time Machine. Ancient Egypt and Contemporary Art” in London and in 1995 he exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London with “Art Now. Emotional Detox: The Seven Deadly Sins”. In the same year he was at the Royal Academy of Arts in London with “Sensation!”
Two very important solo exhibitions were put on in 1998 at the South London Gallery and at the Gagosian Gallery in New York with “Marc Quinn. Incarnate”. In 1999 he exhibited at the Kunstverein Hannover and in 2000 he was in Italy at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. More recent exhibitions include: “Flesh”, in 2004 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and the group exhibition “The Flower As Image. From Monet to Jeff Koons” at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. “Chemical Life Support” went on show at the White Cube, London, in 2005. In 2006 he exhibited at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Holland. He received the 2004 award from the Fourth Plinth Commission for Trafalgar Square, after obtaining the “Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award” in London, 2001.