India solo exhibition for Marc Quinn in 2013

"I am working on a new series of shells. I have taken 3D scans of the shells and printed them in a 3D format. It will be cast in bronze and polished from inside," says Quinn who has visited India countless times and was in the capital to attend the just concluded India Art Fair.

The sea shells would be part of the first solo exhibition here of the artist who says has been visiting India for many years now. The exhibition organised by the British Council is scheduled to be held next year.

Quinn, who refers to traditional art such as landscape and still life, had in the past created lifesized bronze sculptures of Moss in yoga poses inspired by the Nataraja sculpture of the Chola art period.

Quinn`s ongoing exhibition "Matter into Light" on display from January till April 29 this year at the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has also been inspired by his visit to India.

The solo exhibition includes a skull surrounded by voluptuous flowers and skeletons cast in bronze with fire around it seeming to depict Quinn`s favourite themes such as death, beauty and sexuality.

"The skeleton sitting in the funeral pyre seems to give a sense of how energy transforms itself. I have been to Varanasi and the whole cycle of life process, cremation ceremony seems so natural ...unlike in the west where you die and your bodies are buried and hidden," says Quinn.

Quinn says "Road to Enlightenment" - a gold sculpture of the supermodel Kate Moss seated in a meditation pose and depicted with protruding ribs a concave belly and a visible spinal cord has been been influence by ancient Indian sculpture tradition.

"I was thinking of how humans build up the icons of perfection in the media and then they end up bashing them when they fail to live up to the image," says Quinn who shared a speaker`s panel with artists Bharti Kher and A Balasubramanium at the Art Fair.

Moss, considered to be a epitome of beauty had reportedly her share of troubles with drugs. Born in 1964, the artist had in 1991 cast a sculpture of his head using his own blood and then frozen the entire work.

The work titled "Self" was the first in a series of such sculptures that the artist has declared he would churn out every five years to document the aging process. "I poured my blood into mould of the life casts. For 5 sculptures I put out 60 pints of blood and for me it is an amazing regeneration of the human body. I still go to the doctor every six weeks to draw my blood," says the artist.

For Quinn every artist creates art for himself as also to communicate. "Unlike science which asks questions, art makes people think, feel ... it is a glue that connects people."
Previous works of the artist includes the installation, "Garden," that featured thousands of frozen flowers. He had also created nine adult sized marble statues showing different stages of the evolution of the human fetus.

"In Norway I have created a 10 metre high bronze iris placed in a river." The scan of the eye has been cut out and printed using a computer. The enlarged image has been moulded and cast in bronze and placed in a river with water pouring into the middle from a dam.

"I am interested in how we are all connected to nature and the material world. The irises and fingerprints in my works supposes identity meets abstraction" says the artist.
Quinn was represented at the India Art Fair by the London-based White Cube gallery.