| Concept: Over a period of five
months, Marc (Zuinn had extracted systematically from his own
body eight pints of blood, the equivalent of his total blood
volume. Combined with anticoagulant and antibiotic, this material
was them frozen solid in a life cast of the artist's own head
and displayed in a refrigeration unit as "Self" 1991.
Treading the fine line between life and death, art and life,
the work's survival is entirely dependent upon a constant electricity
supply. Despite its vulnerability, this work can be interpreted
as a bid for immortality: the body's life fluid is normally circulated
and renewed but this accumulation is intended to remain in its
present form indefinitely. (Zuinn works with imprints of his
own body, in latex sheaths, lead casts. They are manipulated
and cut, brutalised and altered. His print is related to a sculptural
work "Template For My Future Plastic Surgery (Aged 80)"
1992, which involved plaster cast body parts of the artists collaged
upon life-size photographs of his naked body. In the print, the
artist's body is collaged with the casts of body parts of others:
a violinist's car, an impressario's nose, his girlfriend's hand
over his heart, a chef's tongue, a coral for a brain. Typically,
it questions the relationship between outward appearance and
interior psychological state, between body and soul. |
