TwistedSifter

“Although I spend a lot of time on the surface, it’s the life inside I want to capture.”
- Ron Mueck, 1998

Hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck was born in 1958 in Melbourne, Australia. The son of German-born toymakers, Mueck grew up making creatures, puppets and costumes in his spare time, experimenting with materials and techniques. With no formal art training beyond high school, he began his career making models for television and film.

Photograph by Hanneorla

Photograph by Burgaard

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

- Mueck’s early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s television and films, notably the film Labyrinth and the Jim Henson series The Storyteller
- 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. Eventually Mueck concluded that photography destroyed the physical ‘presence’ of the original object, and so he turned to fine art and sculpture
- In 1996, Mueck came to the attention of collector Charles Saatchi, who saw his half sized figure Pinocchio in the studio of the painter Paula Rego, Mueck’s mother-in-law. This led to the piece which made Mueck’s name, Dead Dad, being included in the controversial Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, a show that one critic summarized as “realism with a vengeance”

SIZE MATTERS

- In works that are either monumental in scale or undersized, Mueck explores the human condition and psyche, often conveying feelings of loneliness, vulnerability and alienation
- Mueck’s sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images
- Susanna Greeves captures it well: “The sculptures are never human-size, they’re larger or smaller than life. As you move through the exhibition, that gives you a different sense of your own physicality. One minute, you’re a clumsy giant and the next minute, you’re a child at the end of the bed looking up at the mother”

HOW HE DOES IT

Mueck began his sculpture work using latex but he wanted something harder and more precise. One day, he noticed a little architectural decor on the wall of a boutique and inquired as to the material. Fiberglass resin was the answer, and Mueck has made it his bronze and marble ever since.

The process as follows:

1. First, small studies are made in either plaster or clay until the artist is satisfied with the “pose”
2. Next, a larger armature is made and wrapped in bandages soaked in plaster. Clay is molded around this armature
3. The clay is sculpted to form the person- clay is scraped, smoothed and detailed until the final look is achieved
4. A varnish is applied to the clay, to prevent cracking from taking the mold in the next step
5. Silicon is brushed directly over the figure to form a mold. This silicon will retain every detail. Fiberglass is added to make a sturdy, yet somewhat flexible mold
6. A wooden frame is built around the mold, and is attached to it. The frame is temporarily set aside
7. The mold is carefully removed- at this point the original clay sculpture is not needed and is discarded, the important thing is the mold itself now
8. The mold is put back in the wooden frame and it is ready for casting
9. Before actual casting, a colored resin is painted on the inside of the mold where needed- fingers, where the blood flows close to the skin, etc
10. Another thicker layer of resin is added called the “gel coat”
11. Then fiberglass is filled in, save for the face, and set overnight
12. The mold is carefully removed and the silicon face attached
13. At this point veins, blemishes, shaved hair follicles, etc. are painted on
14. A matte varnish is painted on the body, hair and eyelashes are attached, final details are painted

SOURCES
- http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/bio_e.jsp?iartistid=25104
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck
- http://www.vincesear.com/ron-mueck/

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