Ged Quinn
19 Oct - 20 Nov 2005
Ged Quinn
19 October - 20 November 2005
Ged Quinn makes paintings that revisit the tradition of European painting. His seductive canvases, which seem so recognisable, slowly reveal an extravagant mix of European art history and contemporary imagery. By superimposing contemporary references onto grand backdrops of European painting Quinn develops his own environments and mythologies.
In The Ghost of a Mountain a building is situated in a clearing at the intersection of forest paths. The image plays neatly with Heidegger's idea of the 'Clearing' as a location for 'the Happening of Truth'. For Heidegger, it could be said, art is not a tangible product; rather, the actuality of art is the clearing it produces, and its ability thereby to reveal truth. The building within in the clearing is, importantly, Berghof: Hitler's mountain retreat. Quinn resituates Berghof -- now daubed with graffiti -- from Berchtesgaden to Mount Purgatory, which swells up from the forest floor. The ambiguity of this retreat/sanctuary is further played with by its positioning within the forest, where the (irrational) memories of nature myths inform the (rational) twentieth-century products of Western culture (the apparently vandalised holiday home of a fascist leader), as well as by the particular symbols with which the retreat has been 'tagged'. On the walls of Berghof are the names of the four Zoas from Blake's unfinished poem (1797) of the same name: Urizon, Los, Luvah and Urthona. The four Zoas are the disparate and disordered faculties of the eternal Albion in his postlapsarian state, thus referencing the ambivalent meeting of myth and Christianity. The layering of strange juxtapositions in The Ghost of a Mountain raises the question of what happens when myth replaces history? The footpaths radiating from Berghof not only echo the mythic idea of the forest within German culture but also reference Heidegger's idea of 'Phantom Paths' ('Holzweg': timber track/wrong track). Thus the seductive visual experience of the painted 'Phantom' footpaths from Berghof -- which may or may not lead anywhere -- become an oblique mirroring of Heideggerian philosophy.
The Night We Burned Down the Old Dahmer Place borrows a Claude Lorrain painting of 1668 for its setting. The recognition of the seventeenth-century landscape is deflected first by its reversal of the image and secondly by its omission of the Biblical narrative of Hagar, Ishmael and the Angel. Instead of a Biblical drama we are presented with an uninhabited, tattered Teepee which frames the living room of the necrophiliac serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer as it appeared in police photographs. The random nature of death is a theme Quinn explores in several of his recent paintings and in this painting that theme is raised to a high pitch with the inclusion of the symbol of 'universal oneness' embroidered onto Dahmer's chair. During his trial, Dahmer stated that he should have taken a job in a pet store where he could look after the aquarium, a statement called up by the inclusion of the goldfish bowl which does indeed show up in the police photographs of the murderer's apartment. Furthermore, the makeshift cone-shaped dwelling is suggestive of the transience of modern Western communities and therefore it is ironic to find elements of Durer's 'Melancholia I' -- an image in which the instruments of geometry acquire a soul and melancholia achieves a full intellectual dimension -- scattered on the floor. By creating a conceptually prismatic view, the painting toys with modern ideas of hypertextuality (particularly with Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia) and the notion of the historical fabrication of setting.
Gone to Yours also borrows a Claude Lorrain painting (of 1669) for its setting; in this case substituting Claude's pastoral dancers with a rustic structure protecting a bed-cum-shrine. The literary reference of the superimposed squatters' site is 'Fahrenheit 451' in which those who dare to read books with the desire to pass knowledge to future generations become a marginalized community. The inclusion of incongruities such as ritualistic fetish objects (voodoo dolls and crucifix), neatly arranged army camouflages and polished Doctor Martin boots reputedly worn by the anonymous Zodiac Killer in California during the 'summer of love' demonstrate Quinn's refusal to authenticate any idea of cultural integrity.
There are also four small paintings in the show. The small-scale still life paintings depict perfect 'Vanitas' objects in order to play with the codified meanings of everyday objects 'made strange' or apparently obscure items that reference and create bathetic effects: transience and ephemera. In Depo Provera the seductively placed boxes of an intravenous contraceptive product provoke curiosity. In some US states the product is the recommended method of 'chemical castration' for sex offenders. Strangely, then, to find Flowering Myrtle decorating the foreground as it is symbolic of fertility and traditionally included in bridal bouquets. In A Bondage of Opium, nineteenth-century bottles of the drug are a reminder of the widespread use of opiates among the Romantic poets, including Coleridge who wrote painfully about the drug's side effects). Suggestions of escape from the troubles associated with possessing a 'higher mind' are challenged, however, by the fact that laudanum was commonly given to children at that time, and Beatrix Potter makes reference to its consumption when Peter Rabbit eats all the lettuces and falls into a deep sleep. Kitten of God plays on the idea of a Stubbs painting and the Victorian tradition of dressing up domestic pets. The kitten is stamped with Beuys's stamp. The slices of cake in Cake in the Wilderness are arranged in the shape of Spandau Prison.
© Ged Quinn
Gone to Yours 2005
M: Oil on linen
S: 183 x 250 cm
19 October - 20 November 2005
Ged Quinn makes paintings that revisit the tradition of European painting. His seductive canvases, which seem so recognisable, slowly reveal an extravagant mix of European art history and contemporary imagery. By superimposing contemporary references onto grand backdrops of European painting Quinn develops his own environments and mythologies.
In The Ghost of a Mountain a building is situated in a clearing at the intersection of forest paths. The image plays neatly with Heidegger's idea of the 'Clearing' as a location for 'the Happening of Truth'. For Heidegger, it could be said, art is not a tangible product; rather, the actuality of art is the clearing it produces, and its ability thereby to reveal truth. The building within in the clearing is, importantly, Berghof: Hitler's mountain retreat. Quinn resituates Berghof -- now daubed with graffiti -- from Berchtesgaden to Mount Purgatory, which swells up from the forest floor. The ambiguity of this retreat/sanctuary is further played with by its positioning within the forest, where the (irrational) memories of nature myths inform the (rational) twentieth-century products of Western culture (the apparently vandalised holiday home of a fascist leader), as well as by the particular symbols with which the retreat has been 'tagged'. On the walls of Berghof are the names of the four Zoas from Blake's unfinished poem (1797) of the same name: Urizon, Los, Luvah and Urthona. The four Zoas are the disparate and disordered faculties of the eternal Albion in his postlapsarian state, thus referencing the ambivalent meeting of myth and Christianity. The layering of strange juxtapositions in The Ghost of a Mountain raises the question of what happens when myth replaces history? The footpaths radiating from Berghof not only echo the mythic idea of the forest within German culture but also reference Heidegger's idea of 'Phantom Paths' ('Holzweg': timber track/wrong track). Thus the seductive visual experience of the painted 'Phantom' footpaths from Berghof -- which may or may not lead anywhere -- become an oblique mirroring of Heideggerian philosophy.
The Night We Burned Down the Old Dahmer Place borrows a Claude Lorrain painting of 1668 for its setting. The recognition of the seventeenth-century landscape is deflected first by its reversal of the image and secondly by its omission of the Biblical narrative of Hagar, Ishmael and the Angel. Instead of a Biblical drama we are presented with an uninhabited, tattered Teepee which frames the living room of the necrophiliac serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer as it appeared in police photographs. The random nature of death is a theme Quinn explores in several of his recent paintings and in this painting that theme is raised to a high pitch with the inclusion of the symbol of 'universal oneness' embroidered onto Dahmer's chair. During his trial, Dahmer stated that he should have taken a job in a pet store where he could look after the aquarium, a statement called up by the inclusion of the goldfish bowl which does indeed show up in the police photographs of the murderer's apartment. Furthermore, the makeshift cone-shaped dwelling is suggestive of the transience of modern Western communities and therefore it is ironic to find elements of Durer's 'Melancholia I' -- an image in which the instruments of geometry acquire a soul and melancholia achieves a full intellectual dimension -- scattered on the floor. By creating a conceptually prismatic view, the painting toys with modern ideas of hypertextuality (particularly with Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia) and the notion of the historical fabrication of setting.
Gone to Yours also borrows a Claude Lorrain painting (of 1669) for its setting; in this case substituting Claude's pastoral dancers with a rustic structure protecting a bed-cum-shrine. The literary reference of the superimposed squatters' site is 'Fahrenheit 451' in which those who dare to read books with the desire to pass knowledge to future generations become a marginalized community. The inclusion of incongruities such as ritualistic fetish objects (voodoo dolls and crucifix), neatly arranged army camouflages and polished Doctor Martin boots reputedly worn by the anonymous Zodiac Killer in California during the 'summer of love' demonstrate Quinn's refusal to authenticate any idea of cultural integrity.
There are also four small paintings in the show. The small-scale still life paintings depict perfect 'Vanitas' objects in order to play with the codified meanings of everyday objects 'made strange' or apparently obscure items that reference and create bathetic effects: transience and ephemera. In Depo Provera the seductively placed boxes of an intravenous contraceptive product provoke curiosity. In some US states the product is the recommended method of 'chemical castration' for sex offenders. Strangely, then, to find Flowering Myrtle decorating the foreground as it is symbolic of fertility and traditionally included in bridal bouquets. In A Bondage of Opium, nineteenth-century bottles of the drug are a reminder of the widespread use of opiates among the Romantic poets, including Coleridge who wrote painfully about the drug's side effects). Suggestions of escape from the troubles associated with possessing a 'higher mind' are challenged, however, by the fact that laudanum was commonly given to children at that time, and Beatrix Potter makes reference to its consumption when Peter Rabbit eats all the lettuces and falls into a deep sleep. Kitten of God plays on the idea of a Stubbs painting and the Victorian tradition of dressing up domestic pets. The kitten is stamped with Beuys's stamp. The slices of cake in Cake in the Wilderness are arranged in the shape of Spandau Prison.
© Ged Quinn
Gone to Yours 2005
M: Oil on linen
S: 183 x 250 cm