Visitors to the 2001 Venice Biennale were highly impressed with the sculpture Boy--a child who stood five meters high--by the London-based artist Ron Mueck. Harald Szeemann called the sculpture "the sphinx of the exhibition," and it soon became its landmark. The monumental, crouching figure of a youth makes a vulnerable, defensive impression and yet, its watchful eye seems to miss nothing. Mueck's human figures are always technically perfect, absolutely realistic, deliberately undersized or oversized. He first models them in clay and then takes a hollow cast which he fills with silicone or fiberglass. The finished sculptures show delicate networks of veins, fine hairs; they even seem to breathe. Their perfection is always in the service of content, however: Viewers are touched and set thinking by the emotional quality of figures like Pregnant Woman or Dead Dad--created by the artist after the death of his father. With great autonomous presence, exhibiting human features yet completely artificial, Mueck's artworks refer to fundamental questions and allow a wealth of associations.
- ISBN10 8496159523
- ISBN13 9788496159525
- Publish Date July 2007 (first published November 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country ES
- Imprint CAC Malaga
- Format Paperback
- Pages 78
- Language English