At the beginning of May 2000 Quinn made an entire frozen garden for the Prada Foundation in Milan. For a number of years Quinn had been exploring the idea of preservation, initially simply by freezing objects. In 1998 he had devised a method of preserving flowers by immersing them in frozen silicone within glass-walled refrigerated units. The silicone remained invisible, but its refractive index intensified the colour of the flowers making them appear hyper-real. Since the water in the flowers was frozen, the petals became solid assuming the physical properties of glass. Quinn remarked ‘What I like about it is that the flowers seem completely normal but in fact they are utterly transformed. They are transformed invisibly, in the sense they seem alive but in fact they’re dead’. Before constructing the garden, Quinn had decided to make a series of prints based on the project. The artist shot a single roll of 35mm film, from which eight photographs were selected. The day-glo colours accurately record the actual colours of the flowers as seen through the silicone fluid.

In Print Contemporary Art from the Paragon Press, The British Council 2001 Text © Patrick Elliott

Further reading:
Contemporary Art in Print, Booth Clibborn Editions, London 2001. Texts by Jeremy Lewison and Patrick Elliott, foreword by Charles Booth-Clibborn