Hyper Realistic Art – Hyper-Cool, Or Hyper-Creepy?

March 19, 2008

I am going to have to go with hyper-awesome. By now I am sure a lot of us have seen the intense sculptures made by Ron Mueck. Absurdly large and at times equally as disturbing, his work seems to aim for the gut as much as the mind.

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The first sculpture I ever saw of Ron’s was this gigantic new born baby, lumped in a corner covered with bodily fluids. Complete with hair, umbilical cord, even a reddened vagina-it was shocking. The baby looks dead for Christ sake. For all I know, it may be. But as far as my tastes goes, anything that is capable of illiciting this kind of reaction is a groovy in my book. After seeing the wet and lumpy baby I had to see more. What else was he capable of? Did he go further? Or is this as bad as it gets?

What I found next surprised me. A gargantuan sculpture of a woman sitting up in bed, who looks like she just woke up after a night of crying her eyes out. Possibly after realizing how much she misses her dead husband. Whatever the circumstances, it is beautiful. Feelings of sympathy and empathy rushed though me and I saw that Ron had a much softer side than I had originally suspected. To spend that much time and exert that much energy on a work of this scale shows not only dedication, but a very specific vision in mind as well . These sculptures are not the kind of project you bang out on a lazy afternoon, and for me that only adds to the mystery and awe. Knowing how much work it takes, you can rest assured that this is no joke. It is safe to assume that these images are of vast importance to Ron, and you can’t help but give them more attention as a result. Is bigger better? In this case yes, way better.

Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in Great Britain.

Mueck’s early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo.

Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.

In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art, collaborating with his mother-in-law, Paula Rego, to produce small figures as part of a tableau she was showing at the Hayward Gallery. Rego introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work. This led to the piece which made Mueck’s name, Dead Dad, being included in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy the following year.

Dead Dad is a rather haunting silicone and mixed media sculpture of the corpse of Mueck’s father reduced to about two thirds of its natural scale. It is the only work of Mueck’s that uses his own hair for the finished product.

Mueck’s sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images. His five metre high sculpture Boy 1999 was a feature in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the Venice Biennale.