Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.

Quinn is internationally celebrated and was awarded the commission for the first edition of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2004, for which he exhibited Alison Lapper Pregnant. Quinn's notorious frozen self-portrait series made of his own blood, Self (1991-present) was subject to a retrospective at Fondation Beyeler in 2009.

Quinn lives and works in London.

Quinn was born in London on 8 January 1964 to a French mother and a British father. He spent his early years in Paris, where his father was a physicist working at the BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures). Quinn recalls an early fascination with the scientific instruments in his father's laboratory, in particular atomic clocks. He attended Millfield (a private boarding-school in Somerset) and studied history and history of art at Robinson College, Cambridge.

In the early 1990s, Quinn was the first artist to be represented by gallerist Jay Jopling. The artist had his first exhibition with Jopling in 1991, exhibiting Self (1991), a frozen self-portrait made out of nine pints of the artist's blood.

During the 1990s, Quinn and several peers were identified for their radical approach to the making and experiencing of art. In 1992, the loosely affiliated group was called the 'Young British Artists' by writer Michael Corris in Artforum, and included Cornelia Parker, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, and Tracey Emin.

In 1995, Quinn was given a solo exhibition at Tate Britain where new sculptures were shown as part of the Art Now series. In 1997 Quinn's work Self (1991), was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London for the exhibition Sensation. Quinn's Self, along with works by Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst, were already well known to the British public. The exhibition received widespread media attention and had a record number of visitors for a contemporary art exhibition. The exhibition then travelled to the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, and to the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

In 1998, he was given a solo exhibition at the South London Gallery, and in 1999, he had a solo exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover. The Groninger Museum presented a solo exhibition of Quinn's work in 2000. The artist was then invited to present a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2000, where he presented an ambitious new work Garden. In 2002, he was given a solo exhibition at Tate Liverpool which included new works and photography, and coincided with the Liverpool Biennial, where Quinn presented 1+1=3. In 2001, the National Portrait Gallery gave Quinn a solo exhibition for his genomic portrait of Sir John Sulston.

In 2004 Quinn was awarded the first ever commission for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, for which he produced a marble sculpture of pregnant disabled artist, Alison Lapper.

In 2006, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Rome presented Marc Quinn's works in a solo exhibition focused on his recent figurative sculpture, and in 2009, the Fondation Beyeler presented a solo exhibition of Marc Quinn's ongoing series Self, including all sculptures from 1991 to 2006.

In 2012, Quinn was commissioned to produce a monumental work for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games at the London Olympics 2012, for which he produced Breath, a monumental sculpture of Alison Lapper held up by air.

In 2013, Quinn presented a solo exhibition on the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale for art, at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, curated by Germano Celant.

Quinn's first monograph Memory Box by Germano Celant was published in 2013. A feature-length documentary about Quinn's life and work, Making Waves, was released in 2014, produced and directed by Gerry Fox. London's Somerset House presented a solo exhibition of Quinn in 2015, focusing on recent sculptures.

In 2017, Marc Quinn staged a major exhibition at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London. The exhibition was the first in a new series of collaborations with contemporary artists, designers, and architects, which, inspired by the spirit of Sir John Soane, sought to bring the collection to life in innovative ways.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023