Marc Quinn: Chronos & Cosmos: The State Hermitage Museum

Description

Marc Quinn is an internationally-celebrated British contemporary artist whose work includes sculpture, installation and painting. Quinn explores 'what it is to be human in the world today' and uses materials varying from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. In May 2020 Quinn will present a major exhibition at The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Chronos and Cosmos will bring together around 70 works, including a number of new pieces created especially for the exhibition. Quinn's work uses the language of Classical sculpture to explore the fundamental subject of human existence, cultural perceptions of beauty and expressions of identity. Chronos and Cosmos is the first contemporary exhibition to be presented in the galleries of the Winter Palace, with Quinn's works integrated amongst the Museum's 3,000 piece collection to create a rich dialogue between current and Classical. Through interviews and essays, this publication will discuss Marc Quinn's practice in the context of ancient and Classical sculpture, explore contemporary sculpture techniques and examine new charitable projects that engage with the most critical subjects of our times.

Marc Quinn, born in 1964, belongs to the Young British Artists group which became famous in 1997 through the legendary Sensation exhibition of works from Charles Saatchi's collection. Quinn's pioneering sculpture was Self, a frozen sculpture of his head, made with 4.5 litres of his own blood, extracted over five months. In 2005 his statue of Alison Lapper, a woman born with no arms and severely shortened legs, attracted much attention whilst exhibited from on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. With his materials and techniques, Quinn challenges the boundaries between art and science. Besides using ice, glass, metal, marble and lead, he has experimented with flowers and plants frozen in silicon. Many of Quinn's works are in the vanitas tradition, showing clear, concrete references to classic works of art history. Germano Celant is an Italian art historian, critic and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" and wrote many articles and books on the subject. Adam David Rutherford is a British geneticist, author, broadcaster and frequent contributor to The Guardian. His critically acclaimed first book, Creation (2013) was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. Subsequent publications include A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (2017); The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us (2018); Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature's Most Paradoxical Creature-A New Evolutionary History (2019) and How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality (2020).