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Lot Essay
'What I do is add pieces. Truncated stories, half stories, unfinished sentences that hand in the air. Something that might have happened that you're unaware of here' ((G. Quinn, quoted in [https://www.artslant.com/ny/artists/rackroom/39544].)
Meticulously executed with a remarkable control of the brush, True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule is an exquisitely rendered painting by Ged Quinn which unabashedly subverts the traditional romantic notions of landscape painting. Executed in 2004, Quinn projects a decidedly modern narrative onto his immaculately rendered landscape, offering a contemporary and poignant twist on the historical themes revered in the 17th century.
Set within a harmonious landscape, Quinn provides a contemporary reworking of Claude Lorrain's 1666 Old Testament depiction of Jacob, Rachel and Leah at the Well. Crafted in appreciation of Claude's painting, Quinn methodically transposes the original work with technical reverence and admiration, but in doing so, the artist also destabilizes the original associations drawn by Claude. Here, Quinn replacing the well central to Claude's tableau with a depiction of Mount Carmel, an unorthodox religious commune in America, targeted and eventually destroyed by the FBI in the Texan town of Waco in 1993.
Quinn's uncanny juxtaposition shares an etymology with Claude's artistic practice, in particular Claude's incongruous inclusion of the figure of Leah into the biblical landscape. True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule however goes beyond this neat conclusion, with Quinn's replacement of the dominant figure of Jacob, with David Koresh, the Mount Carmel community's leader formerly known as Vernon Howells, who took his constructed identity from the names of a Persian king and the Lamb of God. Deliberately upsetting the harmony of the vista, a model of a pre-Copernican universe is suspended over the town, the universe condensed into a dangling mobile. In this way, True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule creates an uncannily dystopic panorama, creating a dreamlike scenario reflecting on reality. The densely detailed surfaces charged with allegorical statement and conjuring the often-encoded political and theological associations within Romanticism, diverting the viewer from its depicted bliss and invoking instead the darker sides of humanity. As Quinn once explained, 'what I do is add pieces. Truncated stories, half stories, unfinished sentences that hang in the air. Something that might have happened that you're unaware of here' (The artist quoted in [https://www.artslant.com/ny/artists/rackroom/39544]. The result is an uneasy, powerful vision that lingers like an unfinished dream, balancing on the very edge of reality.
Meticulously executed with a remarkable control of the brush, True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule is an exquisitely rendered painting by Ged Quinn which unabashedly subverts the traditional romantic notions of landscape painting. Executed in 2004, Quinn projects a decidedly modern narrative onto his immaculately rendered landscape, offering a contemporary and poignant twist on the historical themes revered in the 17th century.
Set within a harmonious landscape, Quinn provides a contemporary reworking of Claude Lorrain's 1666 Old Testament depiction of Jacob, Rachel and Leah at the Well. Crafted in appreciation of Claude's painting, Quinn methodically transposes the original work with technical reverence and admiration, but in doing so, the artist also destabilizes the original associations drawn by Claude. Here, Quinn replacing the well central to Claude's tableau with a depiction of Mount Carmel, an unorthodox religious commune in America, targeted and eventually destroyed by the FBI in the Texan town of Waco in 1993.
Quinn's uncanny juxtaposition shares an etymology with Claude's artistic practice, in particular Claude's incongruous inclusion of the figure of Leah into the biblical landscape. True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule however goes beyond this neat conclusion, with Quinn's replacement of the dominant figure of Jacob, with David Koresh, the Mount Carmel community's leader formerly known as Vernon Howells, who took his constructed identity from the names of a Persian king and the Lamb of God. Deliberately upsetting the harmony of the vista, a model of a pre-Copernican universe is suspended over the town, the universe condensed into a dangling mobile. In this way, True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule creates an uncannily dystopic panorama, creating a dreamlike scenario reflecting on reality. The densely detailed surfaces charged with allegorical statement and conjuring the often-encoded political and theological associations within Romanticism, diverting the viewer from its depicted bliss and invoking instead the darker sides of humanity. As Quinn once explained, 'what I do is add pieces. Truncated stories, half stories, unfinished sentences that hang in the air. Something that might have happened that you're unaware of here' (The artist quoted in [https://www.artslant.com/ny/artists/rackroom/39544]. The result is an uneasy, powerful vision that lingers like an unfinished dream, balancing on the very edge of reality.