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What’s this man doing? Is he practising yoga to relax his lower back? Or is he trying to look at his penis or his feet? Or is he huddled together because he feels exposed and vulnerable in his nakedness?
The reactions Ron Mueck’s sculptures trigger in us always have something to do with ourselves, our experience, our momentary moods. But one thing seems certain: no one is untouched by these uncanny life-size figures.
Fascinated, we gaze at the man, looking at the red patches on his back, his muscles and tendons, the folds of skin at his elbows, his shiny fingernails, and his rather bent little toe. We’d like to run our hands over his shaved head and his arms, to get a sense of how his skin and hair feel. Warm or cold? Natural or artificial?
Rather disconcertingly, this athletic man is much smaller than an adult – and his arms and hands are oddly oversized. Although Ron Mueck is painstakingly meticulous with the tiniest details, he gives himself considerable leeway with a figure’s proportions – which only further intensifies their uncanny appearance.
He works with life models, though he also occasionally takes part of his own body as a model. To begin with, he prepares the figures in clay. It can take months before they have their “own look”. Then he takes a silicone rubber mould of the figures. The bodies are made of fibreglass and polyester resin, while the skin is flexible silicone – and the little hairs are real. Mueck sets them one by one into the silicone.
Despite the considerable effort Ron Mueck puts into making these figures, he’s interested in something more than just hyper-realism:
“Although I spend a lot of time on the surface, it’s the life inside I want to capture.”