Ironically, occasional rumours of the refrigeration unit
having been switched off – for example during a power cut at the
Sensation exhibition in 1997 and when workmen at the home of the
piece’s owner Charles
Saatchi reportedly pulled the plug – have prolonged the notoriety and
visibility of this 15 year-old work.
Across the Univers, 1998, © the artist
Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube (London)
The
Egyptians practised a nascent form of posthumous body preservation, not
unlike the latter-day cryonic process, and for an exhibition among the
ancient sarcophagi in the galleries of the
British Museum in 1994, Quinn created a variation on Self. This
time, he created a perspex mould of his head with a transparent box
suspended inside where the dormant area of the brain should be. The box
contained a frozen North American wood frog of a certain species (
Rana sylvatica) that allows itself to freeze solid in winter and then thaw
in the spring. Technically, then, the frog remained alive throughout the
exhibition, albeit in a state of hibernation or suspended animation.
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Love is All Around You, 1999, © the
artist
Courtesy Jay
Jopling/White Cube (London)
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In 1998, Quinn created a life-size cast of himself in ice
called Across the Universe, but this time the glass container was
not kept below freezing point and the ethereal effigy slowly thawed.
Incidentally, in the chronology of his career, Quinn’s own form also
metaphorically melted away from his oeuvre after this work; subsequent
self-portraits became more abstract, involving mirrors and DNA
representations of the artist. In fact, he began to turn to the bodies of
others, as in another ice sculpture of a kissing couple made a year later,
entitled Love is All Around You. This work also gradually
evaporated into the atmosphere of the gallery and the visitors inhaled the
vapour. "You are literally taking it into your body, and it becomes you,"
says Quinn of the physical relationship between viewer and sculpture.
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Eternal Spring (Lilies) I, 1998, ©
the artist
Courtesy Jay
Jopling/White Cube (London)
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Next for the deep freeze were delicate, freshly cut
flowers. In 1998 Quinn began dipping lilies, orchids and tulips into
chilled silicone oil, cryonically freezing the dead organisms and
effectively stopping time. Even his oldest frozen bouquet in the
installation Eternal Spring (Lilies) has not aged one day in the
seven years since it was encapsulated in its own vitrine at minus 20
degrees. "The paradox is that you turn the fridges off and life reasserts
itself," says Quinn. "The micro-organisms get working".
His most ambitious cold storage project is The Garden commissioned by
the Fondazione Prada in
Milan. He built a walk-in steel and glass chamber containing 25 tonnes of
silicone in which to conserve a forest of exotic vegetables, tropical
fruits and plants such as plumbago and banana trees, none of which grow
together in nature. The mirrors placed behind the flora and fauna
replicate the spectacle over and over, metaphorically cloning the perfect
moment of full bloom for eternity.
The Garden, 2000, © the artist
Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube (London)
Recently, these installations have been transformed into two-dimensional
prints, paintings and photographs, although the processes are still
technically complex. The prints known collectively as Winter Garden
-a series of them is also represented in the
Deutsche Bank Collection- are in fact permanent pigments ink-jetted onto
paper and then sealed with several layers of gloss varnish. "I’m
refreezing the image a second time," explains Quinn.
Most
works of art enact some form of stasis or a freezing of time, whether it
is the gesture of a painting preserved on canvas, a moment captured by the
camera’s shutter, or even the video record of a performance or event past.
Quinn’s frozen sculptures, photographs, and paintings highlight the
impermanence of art and life, but unlike much contemporary art, the threat
of dematerialisation is not simply an issue for museum conservationists of
the future, but an integral part of his practice – many works even have
their own built-in self-destruct buttons (ON/OFF).
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