PRIVATE TOUR FOR THE MEDIA: Thursday, 17 March 2011, 11:00 p.m.
EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS OPENING: Thursday, 17 March 2011, 7:30 p.m. Introductory talk
by Charles Clarke (London, UK).
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: Beginning 18 March 2011, normal visiting hours.
CURATOR AND MUSEOGRAPHY: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and
Anthony d’Offay.
CONTENTS: The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO) presents the
extraordinary sculptures of the Australian artist Ron Mueck in his first large show in Latin
America. His works depict the different stages of human life with shuddering accuracy.
Suspended in time, the meticulous creations of Mueck reunite us with our own self while at
the same time taking us into the interior world of the other, exposing with great mastery the
physical and emotional states.
From the fragile disturbing small-scale pieces to the impact of the details in the works of
colossal proportions, the protagonists reveal to us the crucial moments in their lives, either
converting us into witnesses of a profound introspection or provoking our empathy by the
extreme vulnerability of the nakedness, old age or first instant of a recent birth.
HALLS: 6 to 11 / First Floor
ON VIEW: March 18 to July 31, 2011.
TECHNIQUES: Mixed-media.
NUMER OF WORKS: 11 works.
CATALOGUE: Text by Justin Paton, chief curator of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna
O Waiwhetu, New Zealand. Available in MARCO’s store beginning the day of the
inauguration.
CONTACT FOR THE MEDIA: Communication and Image Management | Ph. (81) 8262.45OO, ext. 546, 547
and 548 | F. (81) 8262.45O9 | comunicacion@marco.org.mx | prensa@marco.org.mx | www.marco.org.mx
PRESENTATION
The first time that the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey ever presented a work
of Ron Mueck was in 1999, in the exhibition, Casa de la Escultura. The sculpture was an
elderly woman, Untitled (Seated Woman), 1999. It caught the attention of the public not
just for the exacting copy of a human being, but also for the sullen and tired face of the
woman who was inviting a reflection on old age.
This year, MARCO is honored to exhibit the sculptor’s first large show in Latin America,
Ron Mueck. In 1997, the artist captured the attention of the critics with Dead Dad, 19961997, a small-scale sculpture of the sculptor’s father naked and lying down. He also
received notable acclaim at the 2001 Venice Biennale when representing his country with
Boy, 2000, a gigantic almost five-meter tall figure of an adolescent on cuckoos.
Mueck has won an outstanding place in the world art scene in a relatively short time
thanks to the impressive verisimilitude of the most incredible anatomical details of his
personages that cause the spectator to reflect on the limits between reality and fiction.
His works have the particularity of showing the individuals in the most exposed and
vulnerable states generating a profound physical and emotional empathy. The majority
evoke fundamental human experiences, like birth, childhood, maternity, childbirth,
maturity, old age and death. Others offer an enigmatic narrative impregnated with
metaphors and allegories.
In Man in a Boat, 2002, one sees an unclothed man inside a boat with carefully combed
hair whose expression denotes expectation and apprehension. In spite of the meticulous
details of the scene, it seems more like an image of a materialized dream that might be
interpreted as a metaphor of life, a journey without a defined destination.
Ron Mueck utilizes scale in his sculptures to provide emotive and expressive effects. The
space also plays a crucial role in the interaction with the work and the action that it
represents. The monumental scale gives the spectator an advantageous position to study
the expressions and to analyze each detail of the body language.
After the initial intense reaction to the giant scale and its realistic appearance, the
familiarity of the scene allows the observer, for example, to identify themselves with similar
situations of introspection, as is the case with In the Bed, 2005, or to admire the fragility
and vulnerability of the human being in A Little Girl, 2006.
The encounter with Mueck’s work produces a constant sensation of being an intruder or a
snoop who is interrupting an intimate moment. His pensive figures capture moments of
solitary reflection, with eyes open and a gaze lost in apparent indifference to the world
around them, of the spectator who is observing them. Mueck is able to express in them the
notion of introspection and masterfully reveal the level of sophistication of a thought.
Each one of the sculptures of Ron Mueck communicates a panorama of the rich and
complex interior life that develops in that moment and challenges the intellect to think that
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | RON MUECK | PRESS RELEASE – MARCH, 2011
is does not matter how real some images may seem, in the end they are merely
representations.
The exhibition will be on view to the public beginning on Friday, 18 March 2011 until
Sunday, 31 July 2011.
SHYNESS AND SCULPTURE. RON MUECK’S INNER WORLDS (FRAGMENT)
Extract from the text of Justin Paton, chief curator of Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu in
Christchurch, that appears on the exhibition catalogue.
Reporters like to begin their stories about Ron Mueck by noting that he is famously mediashy. Since television and newspapers thrive on personality, celebrity and ‘direct access' to
the stars, journalists clearly feel it necessary to explain to their audiences that they won't
be hearing from the artist himself. Beyond this, however, not much more gets said about
Mueck's reluctance to talk. It's treated as a minor difficulty, something to be mentioned in
passing before moving on to the artworks. And for that reason, surely it's not the kind of
thing I should be bringing up in an official essay...
But I have a suspicion there's more to it.
I started wondering about the role of shyness in the sculptures early in 2010 during a faceto-face encounter with Ron Mueck. Not with the man himself, but with the astonishing
sculpture he made of his own head in 2002. Drawn in from across the gallery by the sight
of this colossal, lone, sleeping face, I could see the pull of gravity on his cheeks, glimpse
the shine of saliva inside his mouth, and trace – whisker by fastidiously implanted whisker
– the swarm of stubble on his chin. If I came close enough, I felt sure I might hear the
whistle of breath through the lips. Here, it seemed, was an example of self-portraiture at its
most extreme – a sculpture that told me everything there is to know about this person and
then some; an act of complete and unflinching self-exposure.
Yet the more time I spent with the work, the less certain I felt about what exactly was being
exposed. After all, whatever Mueck is thinking or feeling in this sculpture is hidden behind
those closed eyes. And the sense of concealment is heightened by the fact that he's not
just lying there but deep in sleep, that state in which our identities turn oceanic and we are
no longer fully ourselves. All this is compounded by the surprise that waits when you walk
behind the work and discover that it's hollow. There’s no storehouse of self, no inner
workings; just a scooped-out shell of resin. And finally there is the work's title, which is not
‘self-portrait' or ‘me asleep' but rather Mask II – a title which tells us in no uncertain terms
that something is being hidden by this face.
Slowly but surely, by means of these small hints and clues, Mueck turns the self-portrait
idea inside out. Far from being an act of self-exposure, the sculpture strikes me now as an
assertion of privacy and dreaming inwardness. Made three years after Mueck's arrival on
the British art scene, at a time of intense media interest in the man behind these
extraordinary objects, Mask II is a sculpture that marks the limit between what we can see
of someone and what we can know of them – and as such it's a kind of manifesto of
Mueck's art. With Mueck, I think, shyness is not just a side-issue to note before moving on
to the sculptures and their dazzling technique. It's a key to the works themselves, and one
of the reasons Mueck goes to such lengths as a maker. Rather than simply being mediaMUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | RON MUECK | PRESS RELEASE – MARCH, 2011
shy, Mueck is an artist of shyness – a sculptor who wants to describe, using resin,
microfilament, hair and paint, the mysterious threshold between the way we look to the
world and the way we feel to ourselves.
BIOGRAPHY
1958 Born Melbourne, Australia.
1978-83
Worked as creative director in Australian children’s television.
1986 Established himself in London and sets up company creating models for film,
television and advertising industries.
1996 Created Pinocchio, 1996, asked by painter Paula Rego (mother-in-law).
1997 Exhibited Dead Dad, 1996-97 in Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi
Collection at the London Royal Academy of the Arts.
1998 Had first solo exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London.
2000 Granted two-year residency as Associate Artist, National Gallery, London.
2001 Exhibited Boy, 1999 at the Biennnale di Venezia.
2003 Opened Ron Mueck: Making Sculpture at the National Galley at the National
Gallery,
London.
Ron Mueck currently lives and works in London.
Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
2007 Ron Mueck. CAC Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Malaga.
2007 Ron Mueck. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
2006 Ron Mueck. Royal Scottish Academy, Edimburgo; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New
York.
2005 Ron Mueck. Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris.
2003 Ron Mueck: Making Sculpture at the National Gallery. National Gallery, London.
2002 Ron Mueck Sculpture. Museum of Contemporary Art, Sidney.
2001 James Cohan Gallery, New York.
1998 Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London.
Group Exhibitions (Selection)
2006 Eretica: Contemporary Art from Transcendence to Profane. Palermo.
2004 Ich will, dass Dur mir glaubst!. 9 Triennale Kleinplastik, Fellbach.
2002 A Perspective on Contemporary Art: Continuity and Departure. The Museum of Art
Modern Art, Tokio; The National Museum of Art, Osaka.
2001 La Biennale di Venezia. Venice.
2000 Ant Noises. Saatchi Gallery, London.
1999 House of Sculpture. Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Museo de Arte
Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Monterrey.
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | RON MUECK | PRESS RELEASE – MARCH, 2011
1999 Heaven. Tate Gallery, Liverpool.
1997 Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection. London Royal
Academy of
the Arts, London.
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | RON MUECK | PRESS RELEASE – MARCH, 2011