Ron Mueck's vision grips Seoul From dreaming giants to skull mountains
By Park Han-sol
How many sculptures did it take for Australian artist Ron Mueck to summon record-breaking crowds to Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA)? Just 10.
Stand before them, and you’ll understand — the spell is immediate.
From an absurd standoff between a semi-nude old man and a defiant chicken to a woman stretched out in a 6.5-meter-long bed, Mueck’s handmade sculptures are eerily lifelike. With every wrinkle, vein and pore rendered in startling detail, his figures — either larger or smaller than life, but never quite life-size — seem caught mid-breath, as if they might blink or turn their eyes to meet their gazers’ at any second.
These hyperrealist recreations in silicone hold visitors in a hush of alluring unease; their presence unsettling, yet so absorbing it demands a second look, then a third.
It helps, too, that they make compelling subjects for photographs — perfect fodder for the social media posts that have become a ritual among younger exhibition-goers in recent years.
Perhaps that’s why “Ron Mueck” at the MMCA — the artist’s largest-ever retrospective in Asia, co-organized with the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art — surpassed 100,000 visitors by April 30, just 20 days after opening, with a record-setting average of 5,000 attendees per day.
