Ged Quinn

signed in English and dated 2010-2011 on the stretcher

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Private Collection, Asia

This work is generally in good condition. There are minor wear and handling around the edges and corners. Please note that it was not examined under ultraviolet light.
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A landscape of contradictions characterizes Ged Quinn’s sublime paintings. Enmeshed in romantic sceneries painted in the vein of seventeenth century landscape paintings such as French Baroque artist, Claude Lorrain, are elements that jarringly belong to the current era. A futuristic-looking architectural object rests on the foreground. It is in fact Kazimir Malevich’s design for a utopian building, one of his plaster studies he called Architektons (1923-1928), which represents the Suprematist ideal of presenting pure feeling in creative art rather than visual depiction of objects. Juxtaposed within the same composition are angelic cherubs and sacred icons framed in floating carved niches – one on the foreground, another in the middle of the sky – as if they are portals to another world.  These elements form a triangle, resembling the classic triangular configuration of Renaissance paintings such as Transfiguration by Raphael.

 “Ged Quinn’s paintings combine landscapes in the vein of Claude Lorrain, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Asher B. Durand, with incongruent and often dark fragments of history, mythology, and the artist’s imagination. His panoramic paintings initially seem familiar to most viewers, even identifiable, largely because they are based on well-known works from the past. Quinn, however, quickly departs from his source material, increasing the scale and adding new elements, using the original work as a springboard. "My aim is merely to give a visual impression of the painterly language [of Claude Lorrain, for example] as shorthand for something else," Quinn explains. "I look at the original artistic statement or conceptual quality to find a space to develop my own ideas further."

Quinn’s works are both strange and awe-inspiring in their combination of painterly skills and provocative conceptual strains. Unpacking his narratives is always tempting, but finding a clear storyline is ultimately denied, in that each work contains numerous nonlinear references. “There are circulations, juxtapositions, and layering that allow space for narratives both to develop and disappear,” Quinn has said, “there is always play between the signifiers that allow for the satisfaction of readings, but at the same time, they undercut the somewhat false satisfaction of ‘explanation’.” In Quinn’s work, sublime backgrounds frequently meet dilapidated foregrounds, and at all turns utopian ideals are acknowledged and critiqued.”

(FOCUS: Ged Quinn, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, April 22-June 17, 2012, exhibition introduction)