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Contemporary artist Marc Quinn is one of the leading names of the twenty first century British art scene. Famous for casting his head in ten pints of his own frozen blood, and for crowning Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth with the exceptional marble sculpture of artist Alison Lapper, Quinn has been a rising star of the art world since the 1990s, producing an extensive and distinctive oeuvre like no other. With a penchant for humanity’s darker side and a tendency toward the existential, Quinn creates an art that thinks, always probing life’s big questions through an aesthetic which is captivating. ‘Kuma Mela’ is a print from Quinn’s series of flower paintings, produced across the mid 00s. With an intense, hyper real style, Quinn has updated the classic still life, bringing together plants and fruit that could never coexist in a natural environment two, white butterfly orchids take centre stage, surrounded by waxy red anthuriums, glistening strawberries and tomatoes, and scatterings of blue and yellow petals. There is something almost erotic about the image, full of vibrancy and life with a bewitching beauty, made all the richer by the quiet undertones of death that the impossible marrying of these exotic plants must belie.
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