There should be a brass fanfare and the beat of giant drums as you descend the steps of White Cube in Mason's Yard in St James's. The gallery's latest exhibition offers up a Space Odyssey-like vision of both the future and the ancient past.

It's a monumental installation from Marc Quinn, creator of the sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant, which has appeared on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth.

Here, Quinn takes the figurative beyond the immediately recognisable, with nine shapes hewn from huge marble blocks. Arranged like the columns in a Greek temple, they begin with a rough lump and end in a polished human baby connected to its umbilical cord.

In some, the folds of flesh are familiar but the creatures they belong to are not. One looks like a rhino with the torso of a pea pod; another, a sea horse after a crash diet, is all loose skin.

Each is still emerging from its stone, as though Quinn has not carved outlines but revealed what had been long buried with the patience of an archaeologist wielding a toothbrush.

We are confronted with our own strangeness: what appears alien is actually based on biologically accurate scans of embryonic human life.

Upstairs, a forest of hybrid plants cast in iridescent bronze offers a still life that does not allow for decay. Its physical perfection contrasts with the mutant combination of poised lilies and drooping cucumbers, managing to be beautiful and ugly at the same time.

Until Feb 23, White Cube, 25-26 Mason's Yard SW1, Tue to Sat 10am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7930 5373. Tube: Green Park