Ron Mueck – The Hyperrealist Sculptor

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Ron Mueck – The Hyperrealist Sculptor

Ron Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom, known for his hyper realistic depiction of the human body.

Starting out as a creative director in the popular Australian children’s television programme, Shirl’s Neighbourhood, Mueck also voiced and operated most of the puppets in the show.

His extraordinary skills in creating life-like figures can be attributed to the several years of experience in film and television, most notably the special effects for David Bowie’s film Labyrinth, for which he also voiced the character Ludo.

Mueck transitioned to fine arts in 1996, collaborating with his mother-in-law, British painter Paula Rego, who introduced him to Charles Saatchi, who was immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work.

“I never made life-size figures because it never seemed to be interesting. We meet life-size people every day.”

Mueck uses a very hard dental plaster in his sculptures as opposed to the standard Plaster of Paris, thus explaining the yellow shade in the material.

Mueck’s works faithfully reproduces the minute details of the human body; yet play with scale to produce visuals that are truly out-of-this-world.

His five-metre high sculpture, Boy 1999 was featured in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the Venice Biennale.

His Big Man took him a total of four weeks to complete at a lightening pace, one each for sculpting, molding, casting and finishing.

“I don’t think of my sculptures as mannequins. On one hand, I try to create a believable presence, and on the other hand, they have to work as objects.”

The cover story for Modern Painters compared him to the likes of the notable 15th century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer.