Ron Mueck and the “Scale”

Ron Mueck is a London-based photo-realist artist. Born in Melbourne, Australia, to parents who were toy makers, he labored on children’s television shows for 15 years before working in special effects for such films as “Labyrinth,” a 1986 fantasy epic starring David Bowie.

Mueck concluded that photography pretty much destroys the physical “presence” of the original object, and so he turned to fine art and sculpture. In the early 1990s, still in his advertising days, Mueck was commissioned to make something highly realistic, and was wondering what material would do the trick. Latex was the usual, but he wanted something harder, more precise. Luckily, he saw a little architectural decor on the wall of a boutique and inquired as to the nice, pink stuff’s nature. Fiberglass resin was the answer, and Mueck has made it his bronze and marble ever since.

I visited Manchester Last weekend, and also went to the Art Gallery.
When I stand in front of this giant and naked human body sculpture, I couldn’t wonder: when people see the material object which they used to the human body scale becomes huge and blow up, what kind of ideal would show up in their mind?

If there were just a general scale human body sculpture in front of viewers, most of people might think “it is just naked human body sculpture.”
Like newborn baby, hopeless woman laid on the bed, and shy boy, why Ron Mueck want to blow up and shrink their scale?
People may start to ponder the meaning and issue behind of these sculptures.

Therefore, I thought about my project which related to the scale issue.
If giant cityscapes and endless landscape shrink down to the scale that we are able to touch and play with them, what kind of scenes you want to make?
Especially when we sit down in the car, all the view in front of us become neither realist nor true.
All the visual realists become our imaginations.