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ottobre 08, 2021 - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Ron Mueck - 25 Years of Sculpture, 1996–2021

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

Ron Mueck 25 Years of Sculpture, 1996–2021, the artist’s first exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, will mark the most comprehensive gallery survey of the internationally acclaimed sculptor to date. From his largest to his smallest works, the exhibition includes Mueck’s most celebrated sculptures from a career spanning two and a half decades, shown alongside new and previously unseen works. His unparalleled eye for physical and emotional detail charts the full spectrum of human experience – from the onset of life in pregnancy and in birth, to its final point in death – with unsettling power.

They share a vulnerability, not only with each other but also with Mueck himself, who draws on his own intensely personal thoughts, emotions and life experiences to produce a register of universal emotions and experiences to which we can all relate.  — Jasper Sharp, art historian and curator, whose essay will be published on the occasion of the exhibition

Perhaps the artist’s best-known work, Dead Dad (1996–97) will be on view in the UK for the first time in over 20 years. It was first shown in the Royal Academy’s era-defining exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection (1997), which was instrumental in establishing Mueck’s international reputation. Acquired by Charles Saatchi when first created, the work has since formed part of the Stefan T. Edlis Collection, from which the sculpture is on loan. The piece stopped most visitors [to Sensation] … in their tracks. Dead Dad was something both so shockingly real and so shockingly unreal that, like an unexpected trauma, it left an indelible imprint … one of Mueck’s earliest works, it immediately established his singularity. — Robert Rosenblum, #ronmueck, 2005

In art historian Jasper Sharp’s essay for the exhibition, he examines Mueck’s sculptures through the lens of the seven ages of man, referencing the monologue ‘All the world’s a stage’ from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1623). The works on view chart the full range of human experience, from ‘womb to tomb’ as Robert Rosenblum describes, encompassing the infant, the schoolboy, the young lover, the soldier, the middle-aged justice, the elder and the ‘last scene of all … second childishness and mere oblivion’.

Mother and Child (2003), the artist’s earliest portrayal of a pair of figures in close contact with one another, shows the first moments immediately after birth when mother and child meet as separate beings. Conveying the psychological complexities of this newly formed relationship, they remain attached by the umbilical cord, but this physical proximity belies an unsettling sense of isolation.

Further information in the press release to download

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Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. Ron Mueck 25 Years of Sculpture, 1996-2021, the artist’s first exhibition ...