Ron Mueck's Hyperreal Sculpture of an Elderly Couple at the Beach

Australian sculptor Ron Mueck makes human figures that are never life size, always much bigger or much smaller, and rendered in such obsessive detail that the wrong scale is the only thing telling you they are not alive. The centerpiece here is Couple Under an Umbrella, shown at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2013, an elderly pair on a beach towel who are roughly twice as large as you are. The sunburn, the veins, the way her hand rests on his shoulder, all of it is sculpted in silicone and fiberglass and painted by hand over many months. Via Colossal:

Ron Mueck's Couple Under an Umbrella, a giant sculpture of an elderly couple on a beach towel beneath a striped umbrella, at the Fondation Cartier in Paris
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Ron Mueck in his studio painting the face of the oversized elderly man from Couple Under an Umbrella
Ron Mueck’s Studio, January 2013. Photo by Gautier Deblonde.

Detail of the sculpture showing the woman in a blue swimsuit looking down at the reclining man
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Close-up of the man's face in Couple Under an Umbrella, with his arm resting across his forehead
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Couple Under an Umbrella installed in the glass gallery of the Fondation Cartier with the trees outside
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Museum staff installing Couple Under an Umbrella beneath its colorful beach umbrella
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Ron Mueck working on the elderly man's face with a brush and lamp in his studio
Ron Mueck’s Studio, January 2013. Photo by Gautier Deblonde.

Ron Mueck fitting a section of the sculpture's back in his studio
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Ron Mueck assembling the arm of the giant figure
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Ron Mueck's Young Couple, a small sculpture of a teenage boy and girl standing close together
Photo by Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

Mueck came to art from the other direction. He spent years making puppets and creature effects for film and television, including Labyrinth, before his sculpture Dead Dad was included in the Sensation exhibition in London in 1997 and made him famous almost overnight. He works slowly, producing only a few pieces a year, which is why a new show is an event. The Fondation Cartier exhibition these photographs come from later traveled to South America and drew record crowds. For more sculpture that argues with reality, see Roman emperors recreated as hyper-realistic busts, Patrick Kramer’s hyperrealistic paintings, and the giant pigeon on New York’s High Line. The genre has an entry in our glossary of visual culture.