Burning World

In the frozen flower sculptures, which range from single works to the large-scale, walk-through installation Garden (2000), Quinn captures what he has described as “the purest and most magical transformation of reality into art”. In these sculptures, real flowers in a perfect state of bloom have been plunged into frozen silicone oil. As the flowers freeze they die, but in doing so, they become a perfect, eternal image of themselves.

Garden was commissioned by Fondazione Prada. In this large-scale installation, thousands of different types of flowers and plants were accumulated together in an architectural, walk-through structure. Since many of the species would never grow together or bloom at the same time, Garden represents a fantastical, almost mythical landscape which also comments on the driving force of human desire, attempting to shape and control the natural world around us. Taking this notion as a starting point, Quinn has also used the forms of orchids repeatedly in his sculptures, as readymade forms in large-scale bronze works, or collaged together in The Nurseries of El Dorado series. In these small scale bronze sculptures, hybrid plants are created using elements taken from different plants which are carefully pieced together and cast in bronze.