Arne Quinze

Arne Quinze (born 15 December 1971) is a Belgian conceptual artist best known for his unconventional and controversial public art installations. Quinze also creates large and small sculptures, drawings, and paintings. In his late teens, he started out as a graffiti artist in Brussels, and he never completed a formal art education.

Installation art
Quinze is known for his trademark sculptures made out of wooden planks. His installations are built to provoke reaction and to intervene in the daily life of passersby confronted with his sculptures. Quinze sees his installations as places where people meet each other again and start conversations.

In 2006, he gained much attention by building Uchronia: A message from the future, a large wide wooden sculpture at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Cityscape (2007) and The Sequence (2008) are two of his giant wooden public art installations in the centre of Brussels, Belgium. It was the first time a sculpture gave the impression of touching two buildings in the city center while traffic still passes by underneath it. The installation for the Flemish Parliament became an unequivocal actor in the city. In Munich, Germany, he built Traveller (2008) for the French luxury fashion and leather goods brand Louis Vuitton. Other public art installations by Arne Quinze have been revealed in the centre of Paris, France (Rebirth, 2008), Beirut, Lebanon (The Visitor, 2009) and Louisville, Kentucky (Big Four Bridge, ongoing)

During the festival Rouen Impressionnée which took place, in Rouen in the summer of 2010, he paid tribute to the impressionist Claude Monet by painting Les Jardins/The Waterlilies series for an exhibition in the Abbatiale de Saint-Ouen. The festival was organized as the contemporary component of the Normandie Impressionniste festival, a festival under the presidency of Laurent Fabius, former French Prime Minister, celebrating the impressionist past of the region. Next to the exhibition an installation (Camille) was built on the Boieldieu bridge, a bridge that was painted by the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro several times.

Like a futuristic substitute for the market squares of old, Quinze sees his installations as places where people meet and converse as they used to in bygone eras. Red Beacon (2010) is placed in the Jing'an Sculpture Park, the pioneer of presenting public art in the heart of Shanghai located downtown in the Jing'an District. His sculptures redefine social space and provide alternative models of interaction.

His other work focuses on the axiom that people tend to seek a safe environment, a cocoon eliminating the unexpected. The installation My Home My House My Stilthouse (2011) in Humlebaek, Denmark at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art shows the visitor a new form of how housing and living can be perceived.

He revealed a virtual installation Rock Strangers (2011) on the Statue of Liberty in New York City on the 4th of July in collaboration with Beck's for their Green Box Project. The project is co-curated, commissioned and mentored by Nick Knight of SHOWstudio.com and producer Sam Spiegel. Commissioned work will only ever appear in the digital realm.

In the context of Mons 2015 European Capital of Culture, a wooden installation called The Passenger has been built and will remain visible from 6 December 2014 until 19 December 2019. Unfortunately a partial collapse occurred on 24 December 2014. The installation was fully rebuilt on 15 October 2015 and inaugurated on 16 October 2015.



Work
Quinze's artwork mainly refers to social interaction, evolution, communication, rhythm, the interplay of lines, contrasts and contradictions. Recurring techniques in his work are multiple types of wood, including salvaged wood; cardboard, polyurethane and electrical colors in fluorescent paint. Because of their intense orange-red color the sculptures contrast with their natural surroundings and generate the sentiment of estrangement.

He creates works in themes such as Bidonville, Stilthouse, My Home My House My Stilthouse, View and Chaos; broadening further on his studies of livability in today's context. All his work has a humane aspect; Stilthouses can be perceived as humans on fragile legs symbolizing the strong nature of man. Bidonvilles are considered to be houses for the future as an apperception on the way how people are living now and tranquilize or accelerate the living process intentionally, provoking open communication in a society of human interaction.

In 2009, Quinze installed a public Stilthouse installation called The Visitor in Beirut, Lebanon near its newly developed Souk complex, and auction house Phillips de Pury & Company invited the artist to present his work at their London gallery. Due to its success early 2010, the exhibition was prolonged at London's Saatchi Gallery in the Duke of York's Headquarters on King's Road.

During Hamburg Artweek (2011) he revealed new work showing a shift in his use of materials including smashed old porcelain symbolizing the destruction of our family traditions.

In June 2014, Quinze created a unique artwork in collaboration with Veridor: 45kg of precious metal crafted into a "Natural Chaos". This art piece was primarily made of 18-carat rose gold and 18-carat palladium white gold in rod and pipe form, as well as gold wire and leaves. The piece named Natural Chaos - Golden Edition No. 1 is for sale for EUR 1.8 million on the online luxury marketplace JamesEdition.

Personal life
Quinze lives and works in Sint Martens Latem near Ghent, Belgium.

Marriages
Arne Quinze married Barbara Becker at their Miami waterfront home on 9 September 2009. They celebrated the marriage on 12 September 2009 in Berlin, Germany. In October 2011, Barbara Becker and Quinze divorced.

He married An Lemmens on 6 October 2012. In September 2015, An Lemmens and Quinze divorced.