Arne Quinze (original) (raw)

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Belgian conceptual artist (born 1971)

Arne Quinze
Quinze and his sculpture Mojave, a Chroma Lupine
Born (1971-12-15) 15 December 1971 (age 52)Belgium
Nationality Belgian
Known for Public art installations, Paintings, installation art, Sculptures
Notable work Amazonia (Luxembourg), The Beautiful Dreamer (Paris), The Passenger (Mons), My Secret Garden (Valencia), Whispers (San Antonio, Enschede), Rock Strangers (Ostend), Reclaiming Cities (Los Angeles, Marta Herford), Rock Strangers at the Statue of Liberty (virtual) (New York), Uchronia (Nevada), Cityscape (Brussels), The Sequence (Brussels), Traveller (Munich), Rebirth (Paris), The Visitor (Beirut), Sculptures (Phillips de Pury and Saatchi Gallery, London), Red Beacon (Shanghai), Camille (Rouen, Musée des Beaux Arts), My Home My House My Stilthouse (Louisiana Museum of Art, Knokke, Munich, Paris)
Style Contemporary art, Conceptual art
Spouses Barbara Becker ​(m. 2009⁠–⁠2011)​ An Lemmens ​(m. 2012⁠–⁠2015)​
Website arnequinze.com [1]

Arne Quinze (born 15 December 1971) is a Belgian conceptual artist best known for his unconventional and controversial public art installations. Quinze also creates large and small sculptures, drawings, and paintings. In his late teens, he started out as a graffiti artist in Brussels, and he never completed a formal art education.

Quinze is known for his trademark sculptures[1] made out of wooden planks. His installations are built to provoke reaction and to intervene in the daily life of passers-by confronted with his sculptures. Quinze sees his installations as places where people meet each other again and start conversations.

In 2006, he gained much attention by building Uchronia: A message from the future, a large wide wooden sculpture at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Cityscape (2007) and The Sequence (2008) are two of his giant wooden public art installations in the centre of Brussels, Belgium. It was the first time a sculpture gave the impression of touching two buildings in the city centre while traffic still passes by underneath it. The installation for the Flemish Parliament became an unequivocal actor in the city. In Munich, Germany, he built Traveller (2008) for the French luxury fashion and leather goods brand Louis Vuitton.[2] Other public art installations by Arne Quinze have been revealed in the centre of Paris, France (Rebirth, 2008),[3] Beirut, Lebanon (The Visitor, 2009)[4] and Louisville, Kentucky (Big Four Bridge, ongoing)[5]

During the festival Rouen Impressionnée which took place, in Rouen in the summer of 2010, he paid tribute to the impressionist Claude Monet[6] by painting Les Jardins/The Waterlilies series for an exhibition in the Abbatiale de Saint-Ouen. The festival was organized as the contemporary component of the Normandie Impressionniste festival, a festival under the presidency of Laurent Fabius, Former French Prime Minister, celebrating the impressionist past of the region. Next to the exhibition an installation (Camille)[7] was built on the Boieldieu Bridge, a bridge that was painted by the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro several times.

Like a futuristic substitute for the market squares of old, Quinze sees his installations as places where people meet and converse as they used to in bygone eras. Red Beacon (2010) is placed in the Jing'an Sculpture Park, the pioneer of presenting public art in the heart of Shanghai located downtown in the Jing'an District.[_citation needed_] His sculptures redefine social space and provide alternative models of interaction.

His other work focuses on the axiom that people tend to seek a safe environment, a cocoon eliminating the unexpected. The installation My Home My House My Stilthouse (2011) in Humlebaek, Denmark at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art shows the visitor a new form of how housing and living can be perceived.[8]

He revealed a virtual installation Rock Strangers (2011)[9] on the Statue of Liberty in New York City on the 4th of July in collaboration with Beck's[10] for their Green Box Project. The project is co-curated, commissioned and mentored by Nick Knight of SHOWstudio.com and producer Sam Spiegel. Commissioned work will only ever appear in the digital realm.

In the context of Mons 2015 European Capital of Culture, a wooden installation called The Passenger has been built and will remain visible from "6 December 2014 until 19 December 2019". Unfortunately a partial collapse occurred on 24 December 2014. The installation was fully rebuilt on 15 October 2015 and inaugurated on 16 October 2015.

'Uchronia', a large wooden sculpture at the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City, in the Nevada desert, United States.

'Rock Strangers', a sculpture by Arne Quinze in Ostend

The Beautiful Dreamer by Arne Quinze

Quinze's artwork mainly refers to social interaction, evolution, communication, rhythm, the interplay of lines, contrasts and contradictions. Recurring techniques in his work are multiple types of wood, including salvaged wood; cardboard, polyurethane and electrical colors in fluorescent paint. The intense color of some of his sculptures create a contrast with their natural surroundings, intended to generate a sentiment of estrangement.

He creates works in themes such as Bidonville, Stilthouse, My Home My House My Stilthouse,[11][12] View and Chaos; broadening further on his studies of livability in today's context. Bidonvilles are considered to be houses for the future as an apperception on the way how people are living now, slowing down or accelerating the living process intentionally, provoking open communication in a society of human interaction.[13] Stilthouses can be perceived as humans on fragile legs symbolizing the strong nature of man.

In 2009, Quinze installed a public Stilthouse installation called The Visitor in Beirut, Lebanon near its newly developed Souk complex. Auction house Phillips de Pury & Company invited the artist to present his work at their London gallery. Due to its success early 2010, the exhibition was prolonged at London's Saatchi Gallery in the Duke of York's Headquarters on King's Road.

During Hamburg Artweek (2011)[14] Quinze revealed new work showing a shift in his use of materials including smashed old porcelain, meant to symbolize the destruction of our family traditions.

In June 2014, Quinze created a unique artwork in collaboration with Veridor: 45 kg of precious metal crafted into a "Natural Chaos". This art piece was primarily made of 18-carat rose gold and 18-carat palladium white gold in rod and pipe form, as well as gold wire and leaves. The piece named Natural Chaos - Golden Edition No. 1 is for sale for EUR 1.8 million on the online luxury marketplace JamesEdition.[15]

Quinze lives and works in Sint Martens Latem near Ghent, Belgium.

Arne Quinze married Barbara Becker at their Miami waterfront home on 9 September 2009. They celebrated the marriage on 12 September 2009 in Berlin, Germany. In October 2011, Barbara Becker and Quinze divorced.

He married An Lemmens on 6 October 2012. In September 2015, An Lemmens and Quinze divorced.

  1. ^ Arne Quinze's sculptures, I Love Belgium, 13 July 2010
  2. ^ Arne Quinze & Louis Vuitton collab in Munich, Wejetset, 29 December 2008 Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "Rebirth by Arne Quinze, Neu Black, 7 September 2008". Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2009.
  4. ^ Public sculpture in Beirut, Gestalten, 12 August 2009
  5. ^ Big Four Bridge proposal by Arne Quinze, Broken Sidewalk, 26 September 2009
  6. ^ Monet Giverny Normandy, 11 July 2010 Archived 17 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ www.camille-arnequinze.fr, 28 June 2010
  8. ^ GG Art, 14 May 2011
  9. ^ Arne Quinze, 4 July 2011 Archived 5 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Rock Strangers, Contagious Magazine, 5 July 2011 Archived 12 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Arne Quinze My Home My House My Stilthouse, Art Report, 10 September 2010". Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
  12. ^ Youtube film, Galerie Thomas Modern, 12 September 2010
  13. ^ "Arne Quinze, The Parisian, 1 April 2009". Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 28 April 2009.
  14. ^ Hamburg Artweek, 17 June 2011 Archived 21 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ JamesEdition Extraordinaire