Augmented reality
Marc Quinn's eye-popping sculptures of celebrities and surgically enhanced freaks show that, deep down, we are all the same
Ed Caesar
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article7117308.ece (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article7117308.ece)
Those of a squeamish disposition may wish to look away now. Marc Quinn — the controversial contemporary artist whose most famous works include casts of his head filled with his own blood, and a 15-ton marble sculpture of the disabled and heavily pregnant Alison Lapper, which sat on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square from 2005 to 2007 — has a new show. Entitled Allanah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela and Thomas, it's deeply weird, but also rather wonderful.
Quinn has created marble and bronze sculptures of real characters who have undergone radical body changes. The transformees are chosen from a wide spectrum: Michael Jackson and Pamela Anderson are included in the same line-up as Thomas "the Pregnant Man" Beatie, Chelsea Charms, America's premier "big bust entertainer" (whose breasts weigh 26lb each), and Dennis "Catman" Avner, who has surgically rearranged, tattooed and whiskered his face so that he looks like a tiger. By far the most mind-bending works, however, are two enormous bronze sculptures of the transsexual porn stars Buck and Allanah.