ART CITIES: London-Ron Mueck
Born in Melbourne in 1958 and living in the UK since 1986, Ron Mueck has developed a body of work which touches on the universal, and has profoundly renewed contemporary figurative sculpture. His uncanny and convincing characters, always sculpted on an astonishing scale, take months, or sometimes years, to create.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery Archive
Ron Mueck’s meticulously sculpted figures, ranging from the minute to the monumental, each reflect an inner world of private feelings with unsettling power. The startling realism of these works invites an empathetic engagement with the challenges and perils of our shared humanity. The artist’s intimate, understated meditations on universal experiences and emotions, such as birth, death, vulnerability, fear and compassion, invite viewers to reflect on their own and those of others. His work elicits an immediate emotional response by using all the traditional elements of his medium – pose, gesture, facial expression, scale and realism – to create powerful psychological portraits of the human condition. Ron Mueck’s “En Garde” (2023) is exhibited for the first time in the UK. The work was conceived as a unique edition for his third solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, Paris (2023), and then exhibited at Triennale Milano and Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2023–24). Thaddaeus Ropac presents the single artist’s proof of this work, which offers insight into the internationally acclaimed sculptor’s latest innovations. A colossal trio of black dogs, standing almost three meters tall with ears pricked and hackles raised, demonstrates Mueck’s shifting focus from meticulous surface detail to poise and tension; as he distils his vision to confront the viewer with the immediacy and essence of an encounter which, in typical Mueck style, leaves the audience free from prescribed narrative. The title, “En Garde”, referring to the command that calls a fencer to adopt a defensive stance and prepare for attack, not only describes the dogs’ alert and menacing stances, but also serves as a warning to the viewer: a call to arms that invites them to consider their own participation in the sculpture’s choreography. From the moment of entering the room, the viewer themselves becomes a protagonist as the whole space is charged with tension. The paring back of surface detail in favor of a concentration on form and the orchestration of postures allows the tangibility of that initial encounter to remain palpable as the viewer moves closer, and around, to explore the changing landscape of the dogs’ bodies and their forest of legs. Over a career spanning three decades, Mueck is celebrated for exploring the physiological implications of scale. Whether miniaturized or enlarged, his use of scale heightens our awareness of the relative spaces our own bodies occupy, as he charts the full spectrum of human experience with striking perceptiveness. In “En Garde”, the huge scale of the dogs intensifies their threatening presence and emphasizes our own vulnerability, while at the same time allowing us ultimately to approach far closer than would otherwise feel safe. After working on small maquettes to clarify pose and character, Mueck makes full-size drawings on his studio wall to establish scale before the final work is created. Although packs of dogs have been a recurring interest for Mueck for many years, with clay and wax maquettes populating his studio, “En Garde” marks the first time this subject has been brought to fruition. Uncanny yet familiar, the work shows the artist’s unerring ability to identify and draw out the subtleties of the human condition. Choosing moments that may come from everyday life, but equally from folklore or fairytale – both rich in the imagery of personified beasts – Mueck imbues his dogs with a timeless sense of poignancy. His trinity of dogs, at once creatures from the streets and characters from an unknown mythology, are no different from their human compatriots in leading us to contemplate our own position in the wider world. “En Garde”, with its sense of brooding uncertainty, suggests an undeniable awareness of the fragility of balance and harmony at a time when contentions of the present may irrevocably affect the shape of all our futures.
Photo: Ron Mueck, En Garde, 2023. Mixed media, variable dimensions. © the artist, Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg · Milan · Seoul, Photo: Antoine van Kaam
Info: Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, London, 37 Dover Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 14/2-2/4/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/
