Germano Celant and Marc Quinn discuss Quinn's work in an interview accompanying Memory Box, published on the occasion of Quinn's exhibition at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice in 2013.
![About Change and Life image About Change and Life picture](http://marcquinn.com/assets/thumbnails/Flesh-Painting-%28On-the-Colour-Red%29_MQ3995.jpg)
Germano Celant
Every artistic path is the reflection of a life, so that artworks trace a personal course. Everything that is made means leaving something behind, so that others will be able to understand what one was or is like. A story is told that almost seems like the portrait of a person, the storyteller. As each one of us is unique and carries out actions that are unrepeatable, where does your adventure in art begin . . . and what does it consist of, in terms of both your intentions and your manipulation of things and materials?
Marc Quinn
What I think is really stimulating is that to me, it was about realizing an interest in things about the material world like texture and colour. When I was a small child and how things felt like then and these different things and being really curious in that, but not thinking that this was art, just thinking this – and then obviously going to school and then realising that it sort of is art. So it’s sort of from the very beginning, really. Also, I remember I made this duck out of marzipan. I loved having made this little sculpture and also eating it, so this idea of the material transforming was something I was intuitively fascinated by, that the duck would become part of me if I ate it. And then when I was older and saw artists like Joseph Beuys that were using the idea of the material having a meaning or the energy potential or transformative potential of the material, I kind of felt like this was something I was interested in, too.
Flesh Painting (On the Colour Red), 2012
Oil on canvas
169h x 254w cm