- Venue
- Royal Scottish Academy
- Location
Ron Mueck
5th August- 1st October
Royal Scottish Academy
Edinburgh £6
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ brazenly announced the notion that skill was not a pre-requisite for a work of art. A century later Mueck brings art back to a full circle rejecting the post-Duchampian nihilism prevalent in the art world today.
What can be universally appreciated is the artist’s virtuoso skill. The exhibition starts with a larger that life naked and seemingly un-nerved man entitled ‘Wild Man’. The character takes its roots from pagan myth and in this respect lacks the literalness found in the majority of the works on display. This lack of literalness connects beautifully with ‘Man In A Boat’, which appears to hold a more symbolic and poetic quality. But with reflection on the nature of the exhibition it emerges that this piece forms the hearth of the exhibition and encapsulates its themes. Each of the pieces depicts a rite of passage and etches out the journey of life from birth to death. Thus this work, which depicts a man adrift in the river of life without a discernable destination, becomes an existential comment and renders the fragility of the human condition into sculptural fact.
The artist has the ability to transport the viewer into intensely intimate moments, this exemplified by ‘A Girl’ 2006 and ‘In Bed’ 2005. One depicts a newly born baby blood and mucus soaked, the umbilical cord freshly cut, the other a larger than life mother in deep contemplation following childbirth. The mother and child oblivious to our presence, the artist conjures the private domain and the sensitivity with which it is evoked holds a startling emotional profundity. Mueck lays bare what it is to be human living and breathing, conscious yet vulnerable. Naked literally and metaphorically from birth.
The exhibition can be equally appreciated for both its consummate rendering of the human form veins, blemishes and hair follicles are painstakingly re-created and the philosophical consequences of this realism and the private introspection on humanity these works evoke.
Independent contemporary art critic, based in London. Contact: [email protected]
