The first time I stood in a room with Ron Mueck’s work was at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006. There are only a few exhibitions that I’ve experienced that I seriously think about on a regular basis years later- and this is definitely one of them. Ron Mueck is an Australian born artist, self-taught and exhibiting worldwide. He first started out crafting models and puppets for ads and movies (he’s actually the voice of Ludo in Hensen’s The Labyrinth!) but later moved on to a sense of sculpture that could be described as beyond hyper-realistic. Veins, wrinkles, individual hairs, skin spots, and pores are all accounted for in his slightly (and sometimes hugely) scale-skewed figures. Seriously quite a presence if you ever stand next to them.
Anyway, for all of you that might not be able to make it out to his opening in Japan in about a week and a half, you can head down to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC where “Big Man” is currently on view in the museum’s “Strange Bodies” exhibition.
Images from Mueck’s studio and process:
Wikipedia HERE
Images of more pieces via the Washington Post HERE
Tags: giant, realistic, ron mueck, sculpture
