Kerze (Hellblau)

Oil and acrylic on canvas

Art History

Smoke

Fire

Death

Painting

A graphite rubbing of the artwork ‘Cave’.

Frottage

Graphite on paper

Icons

The End

Work on paper

A graphite rubbing of the artwork ‘Cave’.

A waxwork of Che Guevara based on the photograph famously taken to prove his death.

Alberto Korda’s famous 1960 photograph of Cuban revolutionary hero, Che Guevara, has come to stand for revolution in all its forms. A second famous image of Che, on which Turk’s ‘Death of Che’ is based, was taken in 1967 by the CIA-led Bolivian troops that executed him. For this photograph the soldiers dressed Che’s dead body in his military fatigues and propped up his head to mimic the Korda image. In Turk’s recreation, the artist plays the role of the revolutionary martyr, connecting the political use of Che’s image with that of Marat’s in his previous waxwork, ‘Death of Marat’.

Death of Che (2)

Waxwork & concrete

Revolution

Fool

Outsider

Sculpture

A waxwork of Che Guevara based on the photograph famously taken to prove his death.

Death of Che

A waxwork of the artist as Jean Paul Marat on his death bed, based on the painting of the same name by Jacques-Louis David.

This is a sculpture recreation of Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting of the same name. David was a neo-classical painter who helped swing public opinion for the French revolution. Jean-Paul Marat was a revolutionary martyr who was stabbed to death while writing in the bath (he suffered from a skin disease that was soothed by bathing). In this version, however, Marat is replaced by a waxwork of Turk himself posed in a mirror image of the original paining. Wax figures were first popularised by Madame Tussaud, who began her career as an art instructor to the French royal family guillotined in the revolution. Tussaud won favour with the revolutionaries by modelling wax replicas of her former masters’ severed heads, and even made a waxwork of Marat the same year that David produced his painting.

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Death of Marat

Waxwork in glass vitrine

Appropriation

A waxwork of the artist as Jean Paul Marat on his death bed, based on the painting of the same name by Jacques-Louis David.

A vacform plastic reproduction of the artist's original blue plaque installation of the same title.

Cave

Silkscreen on plastic

Celebrity

Artist

Blighty 

A vacform plastic reproduction of the artist's original blue plaque installation of the same title.

Cave (edition)

The original blue plaque from 'Cave' installation encased in a Beuysian vitrine made with boards from the room walls when first shown.

In the summer of 1991 for his graduation show from the Royal College of Art, the artist exhibited a blue Heritage plaque in an otherwise empty studio which commemorated his own presence as a sculptor.

The title Cave refers to an allegorical picture of Plato, which describes a model of perception. A group of prisoners have been chained in a cave since childhood with no experience of reality other than the flickering shadows cast by the people and things moving along a path in front of a fire situated behind them. In the plaque, the artist was represented by a retrospective view of his life.

Relic (Cave)

original plaque from Cave installation in vitrine

The original blue plaque from 'Cave' installation encased in a Beuysian vitrine made with boards from the room walls when first shown. In the summer of 1991 for his graduation show from the Royal College of Art, the artist exhibited a blue Heritage plaque in an otherwise empty studio which commemorated his own presence as a sculptor. The title Cave refers to an allegorical picture of Plato, which describes a model of perception. A group of prisoners have been chained in a cave since childhood with no experience of reality other than the flickering shadows cast by the people and things moving along a path in front of a fire situated behind them. In the plaque, the artist was represented by a retrospective view of his life.

Authorship

Fate

Illusion

The original blue plaque from 'Cave' installation encased in a Beuysian vitrine made with boards from the room walls when first shown. In the summer of 1991 for his graduation show from the Royal College of Art, the artist exhibited a blue Heritage plaque in an otherwise empty studio which commemorated his own presence as a sculptor.