Venice: Marc Quinn Retrospective at the Fondazione Cini

Originally published in Apollo Muse, June 24.

When you take the vaporetto from the Accademia to the Giardini, among the familiar sites of the San Giorgio Maggiore Basilica and Venetian town houses , is a huge inflatable reproduction of Alison Lapper Pregnant, Marc Quinn’s unsettling and elegant sculpture of a disabled pregnant woman, which was first exhibited on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. It’s inflatable reproduction, Breath, was created for the Olympics, and it is now at on the San Giorgio Island for a retrospective on the artist.

The show, hosted by Venice’s Giorgio Cini Foundation, reveals his interest in human and animal bodies, from inside and out. Quinn’s vision is visceral, and the contortions of his detailed Flesh Paintings (2013) echo the organic shapes of the large gold seashells. The latter from the series The Architecture of Art (2012-3) were placed outside of the Cini project space, along with The Static of Nature (2012), a bright blue flower recently at the Chelsea Flower show. On the grey, rainy day that I see the show, they bring a postmodern hyperrealism to the distressed docks of San Giorgio.

The Flesh Paintings series is Quinn’s most recent work and on display for the very first time. The shapes and details are mesmerising and although it is a painting- the flesh seems cold to the touch. Each painting observes different patterns and textures within the mass of flesh: calligraphy, marble and voluptuousness. This culminates in The Way of All Flesh (2013), where a nude echoing pornography and Kate Moss is in the foreground. A closer look at the fresh faced model reveals a bluish tint around her eyes and lips, a reminder of what lies beneath the skin. The paintings are oil on canvas - but they look airbrushed. It is unclear why Quinn chose the former more difficult medium over the latter.

But Quinn is also a futurist – bringing visions of both an apocalypse and post-humanity. The Sound of Silence (2013) depicts a multitude of plane crashes. Their collisions are still and silent, there is no smoke or fire, but the distorted planes, like Quinn’s figural sculptures, defamiliarise the body parts and images we take for granted.

Also on the island is John Pawson’s Perspectives,an installation for Swarovski in the San Giorgio Maggiore Basilica. The collateral Biennale event which marks Swarovski’s financial support for the conservation of the Basilica. Meanwhile Fragile?  an exhibition about art and glass, also part of the Fondazione Cini in San Giorgio,  includes work by Mona Hatoum, and ends with a display of Duchamp and Ai Wei Wei side by side.