Photosynthetic Forms by Marc Quinn

“No one’s relationship with nature is pure and simple. Nature isn’t pure and simple, either"

Waddington Custot is delighted to present Marc Quinn’s solo exhibition, Photosynthetic Forms. The exhibition serves as an exploration of humanity’s complex relationship with nature and our

environment, which we remain fundamentally a part of. Playing with scale and materiality, Quinn is able to draw out the balance that exists between us and nature, revealing how almost everything in the world today has been manipulated and influenced by human desire.

Our relationship to nature is often one of control, from gardening to agriculture, we tame nature to serve our wants and needs. The bonsai tree, in the form most know it, is a tree restricted to a miniaturised scale through human intervention. Normally, the size and shape of a tree is formed by its natural surroundings - its exposure to light, shade and nutrients. A bonsai is instead shaped by humans, for the pleasure of its baroque meanderings. Quinn’s Held by Desire (Cloud Garden) is a bronze portrait of a bonsai tree, which is in fact a sculpture of a sculpture, seemingly natural but created by human intention.

Works such as Light into Life (The Morphology of Forms), Light into Life (The Release of Oxygen) depict enlarged orchid varieties created in reflective stainless steel, alongside the palm-leaf Singularity (Sabal). These works reflect both the viewer and their surroundings, becoming analogue screens, activated by their audience. These screens are unlike those we use in our phones, that take us away from ourselves. Instead, these sculptures embody us in our environment and encourage us to be here, now.

Similarly, the NATURE NOW series depicts nature through digital lens, comprising paintings of

screenshots made through a phone, that are then overlaid with fractured glass. When one can see anything and everything, whether real or artificially generated through a phone screen, Quinn emphasises the role played by technology in mediating our experience of the world around us.

Quinn’s Our Botanic Selves (Reflected) (Happy Tree) and (Pacific Yew) sculptures further make tangible the hidden threads that connect us to our environment. Inspired by herbarium samples of cancer fighting drugs - these wall hanging sculptures are again made of polished stainless steel. With this series Quinn wanted to tell the story of humanity’s reliance on nature and celebrate how constructive and productive our relationship with plants can often be.

Objects of nature have always been attributed symbolic meaning by humans and for this exhibition, plants become the material for revealing what makes us human, reflecting our desires, histories and beliefs and reinforcing the importance of our relationship with nature, that we are all connected.