With over 50 works including 13 never exhibited before, the exhibition entitled Marc Quinn will be among the most important ever dedicated to the artist, one of the best known of the generation of Young British Artists. In addition to celebrating the renewal of the collaboration between Quinn and Celant (which dates back to the exhibition Garden organized by Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2000), Marc Quinn marks the return to Venice of the English artist after The Overwhelming World of Desire to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2003, and reiterates the growing interest of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in contemporary art.
In the intentions of Marc Quinn - who has always carried out a profound investigation on some privileged themes, such as the relationship between art and science, the human body and its survival mechanisms, life and its conservation, beauty and death - the retrospective at the Cini Foundation which will open to the public on May 29, 2013 it is a "journey from the origins of life" and celebrates, through original works, "the awe and wonder of the world we live in".
It will be possible to admire the cycle in a new and unique spectacular setting specially conceived for the Island of San Giorgio Evolution (2005): series of ten monumental blocks of marble depicting fetuses of various sizes, which reproduces the mystery of life as an extraterrestrial gift that emerges from the lagoon. A tribute to nature, which sees art as an intrinsic and mysterious component, are the seven colossal shells of the series The Archeology of Art: these perfect symmetrical shapes are in fact made by tiny mindless creatures, which seem to follow an order apparently greater than themselves. Finally it will be possible to see the great work Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005), installed since September 2005 on one of the bases in the center of London's Trafalgar Square. The work, which was the central piece of the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games to celebrate the triumph of the life force over adversity, proposes "a new model of female heroism" in which love, motherhood, vitality reach an unpredictable form and an unexpected peak .
Marc Quinn's conceptual work is realized through sculpture, painting, installations and video. The artist's strong interest in the capacity for metamorphosis of both nature and human life drives him towards an attraction for man's innate spirituality. Quinn questions the codes of nature through the use of materials that do not accept compromises, such as ice, blood, marble, glass and lead. Through the use of these materials, Quinn's works explore life, death, sexuality and religion in a poetic and at the same time provocative way. Quinn transforms the act of simple observation, forcing the viewer to question his surroundings, pushing him towards the unknown, to encourage rediscovery.
From 29 May – 29 September 2013
Cini Foundation
