MARUANI MERCIER
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Fairs
  • News
  • Viewing Room
  • About
  • Contact
  • Shop
Cart
0 items €
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu
En Œuf
Gavin Turk, Gallery | Brussels, 14.01 - 14.02.2019

En Œuf: Gavin Turk

Past Exhibitions exhibition
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Publications
  • Enquire
Overview
En Œuf, Gavin Turk

The egg is the beginning of things and the end of things. It is the moment of conception, of inception: from a single celled Amoeba to the hubristic higher form human. 

We are at an exciting but terrifying moment in history.  The pivotal point on the roller coaster where the carriage slows right down - ready to speed up to a terrifying and exhilarating pitch. Only this time we don’t know if there is an end. Or a stop. Or just an abyss. We are the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves. We know so much and can do so much - we have found the universal truth in the human. We know we have been just a moment in history and already we have moved from the great apes to the great dominator - the consumer of all things. We are exhilaratingly wise and we are profoundly stupid. 

 

At this moment we need levity, fun, playfulness and simplicity. We need colour, form, ideas and connectivity. We need the great recycling: The Becoming. The reminder of what has come before and could come next if we imagined it to be, or if we neglect to imagine at all.

 

Gavin Turk is the great art recycler. Of Art history, of materials, of identity, of value, of ideas, He capriciously represents all that you already know. Reminds you of something that makes you smile, recoil, re-engage, laugh inside. To embrace yourself is to know yourself. To know others - to feel others. To accept the other. 

 

The white male domination of Western art history has come to an end. The sharing of power has begun. The global human has to do the same – to share power with itself and with Nature. Within the ecosystem, we find the humility in our hubris. This work begins at home and Gavin Turk plays with his past and his present. He weaves skittishly but elegantly though the annals of his recent history. The naïve simple era of minimalism. Ellsworth Kellys lucid, uncomplicated platonic forms, sliced from a giant egg in childlike simple colour fields: A nod to a different era that looked forward to the future. The philosophical circularity of the Wittgenstein puppet and his logic contemplation of the foolish vulval form. The hot-headed artist inhabiting the fountain of Boetti, watering the garden of the intellect. 

 

The trompe l’oeil of the transformed object. The trick of the eye. Fake News. Paint-stakingly, ludicrously and lovingly recreated in another medium. Invisible to the eye. Profound and seditious in the mind. Our unthinkable and preposterous behaviour appears before us as a vision, a thought and a smile. The prescriptive moral tablets just out of sight. 

 

What came first the chicken or the egg? The most prolific species on the planet is the one we most like to eat. (over one and a half thousand per second - apparently) The simplicity of the egg. The platonic form. Both intellectual and sexual and somehow absurd. It is the great surreal object of our art past.  Reminding us to play, to imagine. To slow down. To remember and to learn. Here. Now.

 

En Oeuf is En Oeuf. 

 

Text by Deborah Curtis

Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Download Press Release
Installation Views
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Works
  • Gavin Turk GT Eggs 3 Red, 2012 silkscreen ink on canvas 160 x 124 x 3.5 cm 62 15/16 x 48 13/16 x 1 6/16 in
    Gavin Turk
    GT Eggs 3 Red, 2012
    silkscreen ink on canvas
    160 x 124 x 3.5 cm
    62 15/16 x 48 13/16 x 1 6/16 in
  • Gavin Turk Oeuvre (Verdigris) - TO BE PRODUCED - RETAIL PRICE W/O SHIPMENT & INSTALLATION, 2018 patinated bronze 148 x 203 x 148 cm 58 4/16 x 79 14/16 x 58 4/16 in
    Gavin Turk
    Oeuvre (Verdigris) - TO BE PRODUCED - RETAIL PRICE W/O SHIPMENT & INSTALLATION, 2018
    patinated bronze
    148 x 203 x 148 cm
    58 4/16 x 79 14/16 x 58 4/16 in
  • Red Geometry_2018_Gavin Turk
    Gavin Turk
    Red Geometry, 2018
    acrylic on canvas
    50 x 425.7 x 5.2 cm
    19 10/16 x 167 9/16 x 2 1/16 in
Close
Publications
  • Gavin Turk

    Gavin Turk

    En Œuf Maruani Mercier Gallery, 2019 Book 124 pages
    Publisher: Maruani Mercier Gallery
    ISBN: 978-2-930487-30-4
    Read more
Enquire

Send me more information on En Œuf

Please fill in the fields marked with an asterisk
Receive newsletters *
Send enquiry

* denotes required fields

In order to respond to your enquiry, we will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google: Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Related artist

  • Gavin Turk

    Gavin Turk

Back to exhibitions

Join our mailing list

Submit

* denotes required fields

In order to respond to your enquiry, we will process the personal data you have supplied to communicate with you in accordance with our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google: Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Maruani Mercier

Privacy Policy

Contact

 

Privacy Policy
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2023 MARUANI MERCIER
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences