Artworks2013Holy Egg (Buff)

An appropriation of Lucio Fontana's "Fine di Dio" (The End of God), this egg-shaped painting is dramatically perforated, its rich painterly surface vandalized as Gavin Turk's initials are subtly cast by the punctured holes, revealing the empty space behind the canvas whilst remitting the painting to a three-dimensional object. The egg, as a heavily charged archetypal sign brings-up notions of beginning and end, the alpha and omega of all things, a closed loop, that which is before speech and thought, the inaccessible unknown. The fleshy quality of the paint surrounding the punctures on the canvas allude to Jesus Christ's stigmata. Titled "Holy Egg", this series of works plays with notions of the authenticity of art as well as the aura of the artwork, alluding to the religious symbolism associated with the egg as well as to a long-standing historical relationship between art and religion, iconography and iconoclasm.