Ron Mueck: Monstrous Reality
Ron Mueck, originally from Australia, started out life as a television and film model maker, creating models and figures for films such as the Jim Henson directed “Labyrinth” in 1986. With an obsession for detail and the minutiae of model making, Mueck’s models were the precursor to his later sculptures that would become described as the “Hyper-real”.
Mueck creates sculptures of people, sometimes whole, but mostly in the form of a body part or feature. The work is creepy, so grotesque, so close to the real thing that waves of disgust, morbid fascination, curiosity and introspectiveness overcome viewers, experiencing a true sense of the sublime, of the overwhelming realities of the Human condition.
Perhaps “Mask” 1997, is where Mueck’s rise to success took a public turn, forming his contribution to the “Sensation” exhibition made famous by other contributors such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. Standing at over 8ft, this self portrait of Mueck’s face was intimidating and disconcertingly scaled. With features under and oversized, at first glance the face seems anatomically correct, slowly emerging as caricature rather than an exact likeness.
Mueck’s sculptures are not beautiful, but they do ask us to question beauty. They stare us in the eye, confront unnerve us, often creating a sense that getting to close would be an invasion of privacy or personal space. To the viewer, the sculptures are not objects, they are subjects, like anthropological samples, examined, prodded, dissected and displayed for all to see.
It is the small details that cause the most disturbance, the oily patch on an arch of the nose, the hint of a blue vein under the scalp of a newborn baby, the glisten of saliva in the corner of a pair of gargantuan lips. It is these details that force us to confront our own fragility and imperfections and lead to the perception of the Hyper-real, so real, it hurts.
EDITORS NOTE:
Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working and living in Great Britain.
Mueck’s mother-in-law is Paula Rego, a Portuguese painter, printmaker and illustrator.
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Artist Rooms: Ron Mueck, Aberdeen Art Gallery,
29 August – 31 October 2009.
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