To Thaddaeus Ropac to catch Ron Mueck's first exhibition with the gallery, a small retrospective survey celebrating his oeuvre of the last twenty five years. The passage of time and its effects on the ageing of the human body are the themes here executed in a hyperrealistic style much like Duane Hanson's work (here). Mueck's sculptures are meditations on the human condition and the cycle of life. They reflect Shakespeare's observations on the seven ages of man from his play As You Like It. They are latter day memento mori reminding us that none shall escape the clutches of the Grim Reaper and that inevitably, we too must die. Scale too is key to much of Mueck's work, whether it be the massive, human face apparently suffering mental health problems, looming out of the gloom of a darkened space, in a piece that looks similar to an earlier self-portrait, the gigantic figures captured in an intimate moment in the autumn of their years lounging under an umbrella at the end of the exhibition, or the small-scale figures of mothers confronting and coping with the harsh realities of the strange aftermath of birth and parenthood. In combination with the scale of Mueck's sculptures are the emotive/psychological responses provoked that we as viewers feel for his subjects. Dead Dad, a depiction of his own father, is the sculpture which propelled him to fame after its inclusion in the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy, is included here, and has lost none of its capacity to both shock, yet elicit a sense of grief and sympathy to anybody who has felt the loss of a certain loved one. Any desperate, sleep-deprived, new parent will readily identify with Mueck's Woman with Shopping. Although small in scale it leaves a large, powerful impact in its truth, and one can only sympathise with, and feel for this exhausted mother possibly suffering with post-natal depression, physically bearing both the weight of the world in her shopping bags, and the newborn strapped to her chest who desperately searches for recognition, love, and possibily its next feed in its mothers eyes. Her gaze sadly, isn't immediately returned. All of the sculptures whatever their scale are executed and accomplished with the meticulous virtuosity of a master craftsman. A new development in Mueck's work is the use of iron in his latest work Dead Weight, a huge sculpture of a human skull again emphasising and reinforcing the theme of memento mori. What is interesting is that like the sculptor Auguste Rodin (whose works will feature in future posts), Mueck has chosen to leave the seam lines and plugs of the casting process visible, which might perhaps hint at a new development in his work and a departure from the hyperreal style of sculpture which has been his trademark thus far. As well as the physical sculptures themselves Thaddaeus Ropac displays a series of fascinating photographs documenting Mueck at work in his studio showing his working models, drawings and process. The photographs are interesting in that they show the preparatory models in various scales and stages of development. The finished sculptures are so immaculately polished I think it would be a good contrast in future exhibitions of Mueck's work to also present these clay and plaster working models alongside the finished pieces in order to demystify Mueck's processes to visitors. Mueck's art has been met with suspicion from some critics in the art community, possibly because of his commercial art background. I am convinced of his sincerity, though. Mueck is a dispassionate observer, imbuing his sculptures with a strong sense of emotivity, which record observations of the psychological states of the human condition. One only has to look closely at the unglamorous incidental details captured so lovingly in his work, such as the calloused feet on the woman in Couple Under an Umbrella, along with her stretch marks and wrinkled skin. There is also the lined, careworn expressions on the faces of Dark Place, and Woman with Shopping. These details are recorded with the eye of an artist, and executed with a sense of tenderness and compassion of a humanist. The skill and sensibilities of an artist.
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