Ged Quinn

Evolving from a spectrum of sources in art history, photographs, memory, newspaper cuttings and books, 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.Quinn studied at the Ruskin, Oxford, Slade School of Art, London the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Rijksakademie Amsterdam.

He is represented by the Friedman Gallery , London.

I like America and America likes me

Quinn’s print is from a painting made in 2004 entitled I Like America and America Likes Me. This painting originates from a Stubbs painting of a water spaniel  and is part of Quinn’s ongoing series of cats and dogs.

George Stubbs painted the original work in 1778, two years after the Declaration of Independence. In this work the dog’s tumid genitalia hang beneath a map of modern America, which appears as a marking in the spaniel’s coat, having the effect of turning the well bred into an unnatural curiosity. The freak show element of this work suggests irrational fears, and a biblical, superstitious obsession with strange signs and portents, contrasting the rational Stubbs with modern, global anxieties. The title of Quinn’s painting refers to a 1974 performance of the same name by Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) during which the artist spent two days in the Rene Block Gallery, New York with a coyote – a symbol of the pre-colonial American wilderness.

Artist: Ged Quinn
Title: I like America and America likes me, 2007
Medium: Polymer photogravure
Size: 70cm x 65 cm
Edition: size 30
No available:  4
Price: £4500 + VAT