the complete marbles
An exhibition of work by British artist Marc Quinn
"If the Venus de Milo had arms, it would most probably be a very boring statue," says the artist, who -- shortly before he began this series -- wondered why we gaze raptly at ancient statues with missing limbs but avert our eyes from real people in the same state. Instead of the perfection of incomplete statues, he heroicizes incomplete bodies -- specific ones. These are portraits of actual people with missing, amputated, or deformed limbs, survivors of car crashes, motorcycle accidents, birth defects, or in the case of Selma Mustajbasic, a cafe bombing in Sarajevo.
Village Voice
The current show consists of a series of eleven carved marble sculptures that depict adults who, by defect of birth or amputation, have partial or missing limbs. Quinn presents these men and women as life-size heroic figures. The medium and realistic rendering aligns the sculptures with classical antiquities, where incompleteness, contextualized by our regard for survival, begets its own form of beauty. The exhibition will run through February 28, 2004.
Mary Boone Gallery
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"If the Venus de Milo had arms, it would most probably be a very boring statue," says the artist, who -- shortly before he began this series -- wondered why we gaze raptly at ancient statues with missing limbs but avert our eyes from real people in the same state. Instead of the perfection of incomplete statues, he heroicizes incomplete bodies -- specific ones. These are portraits of actual people with missing, amputated, or deformed limbs, survivors of car crashes, motorcycle accidents, birth defects, or in the case of Selma Mustajbasic, a cafe bombing in Sarajevo.
Village Voice
The current show consists of a series of eleven carved marble sculptures that depict adults who, by defect of birth or amputation, have partial or missing limbs. Quinn presents these men and women as life-size heroic figures. The medium and realistic rendering aligns the sculptures with classical antiquities, where incompleteness, contextualized by our regard for survival, begets its own form of beauty. The exhibition will run through February 28, 2004.
Mary Boone Gallery
