Ron Mueck

I took my wife (the sculptor) to see the Ron Mueck exhibit at the Fort Worth Modern Museum yesterday.

Wow.

This guy does super-realistic polyester-resin and fiberglass sculptures of people. But he puts a tiny little twist on them-- he plays with scale. Sometimes just a little, like half-sized babies and 1.5 X Wild Man. But sometimes, as in the case of "A Girl," he turns a still-bloody newborn into a 25 foot long behemoth. Note how her face is squeezed like a walnut. She's no more happy about awakening from her slumber in Mama's uterus than my 5 year old was about being joggled out of bed for school today.

Then there was the Big Man, which, while sitting, was about my height. I would call him 3X, in total volume. Maybe more. You felt very, VERY uncomfortable about standing in front of this one-- he didn't like it.

Mueck was a special effects guy in the movies for years. What he gets is texture, and attention to detail. You never really appreciate how much a pimple adds to humanity, until you're seeing one on a 5-foot face lying on its side about a foot in front of you.

I halfway expected to smell them. (Yes, for good or bad, humans have an odor.) But they were sterile, empty of any scent.

Worth seeing.