Biography of Marc Quinn
Marc Quinn’s provocative taste for the unconventional—both in terms of his choice of material and of subject—has gained him considerable attention as a sculptor and visual artist. His ongoing project Self, a cast of Quinn’s head made out of the artist’s own frozen blood, first led him to prominence. His incisive sculptures of figures that challenge hegemonic gender norms—including trans pornstar Buck Angel and Thomas Beatie, also known as “The Pregnant Man”—continue to hover over the margins of the acceptable. Quinn’s keen amalgamation of current discourses, and his fascination for sex and sexuality, makes even his seemingly innocuous paintings and prints of deep-red flowers in reverse color and large-scale bronze orchid sculptures appear intimately caught up in notions of eroticism.
Born in 1964, Marc Quinn studied art history at the University of Cambridge and subsequently starting exhibiting in the early 1990s during which time he was loosely associated with the Young British Artists group. Quinn has exhibited widely since then, notably at Tate Gallery, London, the National Portrait Gallery, also London, as well as Tate Liverpool and MACRO, Rome. His stunning work can be found in the collections of renowned institutions such as the Musée National d'Art Moderne, in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
