Private View Review - Mark Quinn @ White Cube Mason's Yard - London

Mark Quinn’s work never really did it with me. I never quite got that whole Kate Moss yoga thing with 'Sphinx'. But I get it now. Today, I am a total convert - A fan of Quinn’s, a devotee to each and every one of his recent works, which were unveiled at the swanky west one White Cube Mason's Yard last night.

Now Quinn’s clearly got sex, birth and procreation on his mind; this show is all about human and plant style breeding. It’s a fantastic mix, one which Quinn’s given his all to, producing in a whole host of media’s, set out over three spaces of the gallery. Upstairs, in the first room, ‘The Nurseries of El Dorado’, was a real paradise jungle; four enormous hand painted canvases of brightly coloured flowers surrounded the floor space in between, which was covered with podiums topped by bronze, chrometized potted plants. Think shinny lilies, bearing fruit - strawberries, apples and large rather phallic giant jalapeños. Yeah, you get the idea. To a child it would look like the secret garden, to an adult, the secret sex garden – and it was frankly, breathtaking.

Downstairs, Quinn went back to marble, with nine enormous sculptures, depicting the various fetal stages of pregnancy. Now, that might sound a little icky, but believe me, there was nothing vulgar here. These, which are being sold as a set, were clean, solid and stunning. The embryos looked as though they were practically fighting to get out of the stone, while the grain of the marble was ideal, strangely flesh-like and alive. Finally, in the smallest room, Quinn included some working sketches; drawings in water colour and thick pencil, filled with energy and confidence.

Quinn is quite the funny guy. The works at White Cube have been dubbed with some dry, amusing titles like: 'Opening of the Northwest Passage', and 'The Lost Rivers of London' . Oh, and my favorite, 'Early Self-Portrait', a small pick marble fetus, of a stage when we all looked the same.

Mark Quinn @ White Cube, 25 -26 Mason's Yard, London from 25 January - 23 February 2007.