FORT WORTH – Almost everyone who attends the Ron Mueck exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will find one or more of his hyperrealistic sculptures difficult to look at. What that sculpture will be will vary from person to person, but here are some contenders.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Big Man (2000), picgmented polyester resin on fiberglass
It could be A Girl. This girl is a newborn with umbilical cord still attached, eyes barely open and her skin slick from the birth. She is also approximately 16 feet long and fills one end of a spacious gallery. On the other hand, Baby, a newborn boy, is only 10 inches long. He is mounted onto the wall in a disturbingly rigid pose, more like a specimen than a living being. At the other end of the age spectrum, there is Old Woman in Bed. She is only 37 inches long, her skin almost translucent, her body covered by a white sheet and blanket. She is sleeping and almost certainly near death. The artist reports that children react very strongly to the almost 7-foot-tall Big Man, a Brobdingnagian nude male who crouches in the corner with his head in his hand and looks grouchy.
Mr. Mueck, who is Australian but now based in London, began his career in the film business, working in the special effects shop for Jim Henson on such 1980s films as Dreamchild and Labyrinth. He entered the art world in 1997 via "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection." That was an exhibition filled with outrageous things, like Damien Hirst's shark suspended in formaldehyde and Chris Ofili's portraits of the Virgin Mary supported by balls of elephant dung. But the most startling encounter in that exhibition was Mr. Mueck's Dead Dad, a painstakingly and painfully realistic silicone sculpture of an elderly man's naked corpse, laid on the floor and just 40 inches long. In Fort Worth, Dead Dad lies alone in a gallery that normally contains six or more abstract expressionist paintings, but emotionally, that space has never seemed so full.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
In Bed (2005-06), mixed media
Mr. Mueck makes his smaller sculptures in silicone and the larger ones from resin. With the smaller works, he renders the surfaces with scrupulous realism, sometimes including details such as fingerprints. The larger works have some simplifications worked on the body parts so you are not overwhelmed by what would be freakish details in such an enormous scale. But in every case you see the veins beneath the skin, and every hair has been applied individually. Those that are clothed have had outfits designed for them.
In reproduction all these works look human scale. When you see them pictured, it is hard to imagine that the gossiping old women of Two Women are only 33 inches tall, or that the woman pictured In Bed is more than 5 feet tall and almost 20 feet long. But when you are in the gallery with these personages, there is always something right about the size and the way it conveys the emotional weight of each sculpture.
Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999/2002), mixed media
With work this technically sophisticated, there is a natural tendency to assume that in the 21st century it is the product of massive amounts of computer technology that somehow makes fabrication possible. But in many ways Mr. Mueck's studio could have existed in the Renaissance. He starts from a few sketches and small clay models, works his way to full-scale clay prototypes and uses those to cast molds for the silicone or resin. The materials themselves carry some of the final color, but for the most part, color is applied after the sculpture has been cast.
Mr. Mueck's themes are as traditional as his methods. He is examining the cycle of life, from the moment of birth to just after death. Along with his newborns and his dying elders, he has created an adolescent who examines himself in a mirror as though he were an alien or a work of art. His Spooning Couple are a mature pair lying in bed, both facing the same way, their eyes open. The couple is almost but not quite touching.
Two Women (2005), mixed media
Their separation speaks to what seems to be another theme running through this work, that we are born and die alone. But it is not a despairing experience to share time with these objects, perhaps because they are so well done. This exhibition has the fullness of a richly told story that you want to read to its inevitable ending.
Charles Dee Mitchell is a Dallas freelance writer.
"Ron Mueck" continues through Oct. 21 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. $10; discounts for students and seniors; free for children younger than 13. Free every Wednesday and the first Sunday of each month. 817-738-9215 or 1-866-824-5566. www.themodern.org.
