No Visible Means of Escape V

Cast from the artists own body, Marc Quinn's No Visible Means of Escape V relates to his early iconic latex works such as You Take My Breath Away (1992, Saatchi Collection, London), Emotional Detox, subject of a solo exhibition at the Tate in 1995, and Self (1991, Saatchi Collection, London), a self-portrait head the artist made from his own frozen blood. A provocative suggestion of change and transformation, No Visible Means of Escape I and IV are in the Saatchi Collection and the Tate respectively. In all these works, the artist has used his own body to powerful effect. In No Visible Means of Escape V, Quinn's nude body has been cast in hollow polyurethane rubber and pigmented a rich, earthen brown using oil paint. Dramatically split in two up to the neck, the back half of the body hangs from rope attached to the ceiling so that the front of the toes just clears the floor. A suspension of both time and space, Quinn has described No Visible Means of Escape V as 'an extreme moment of transformation, a violent shedding of the skin.' (M. Quinn, quoted in T. Riggs, 'No Visible Means of Escape V Summary', TATE ETC., October 1997, reproduced at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/quinn-no-visible-means-of-escape-iv -t07238/text-display-caption).