In the age of transhumanist utopias and cosmetic surgery, how do we view our imperfect bodies? Born in the United States in the 1960s, hyperrealistic sculpture is experiencing a resurgence of interest that raises questions for us: after the Maillol Museum and the Beyeler Foundation 1, it is now being honored at the Nantes Museum of Art, the only French public collection to hold a sculpture by the master of the genre, Duane Hanson.
Alongside her lifelike bookseller and art dealer (molded in polyester resin, but dressed in real clothes and accessories), are presented around forty works by eleven international artists including Marc Sijan, Tony Matelli, Gilles Barbier and Daniel Firman.
TROMPE-L'OEIL
The whispers of the figures buried under blankets echo the hooded or helmeted youths of the latter. like ghosts of human tragedies Berlinde De Bruyckere's work, or the shoe emerging from beneath a fascinating ceramic bedspread by Saana Murtti. Sam Jinks's wrinkled silicone babies (2013) are echoed by Tip Toland's wrinkled, grimacing face of an old woman in painted stoneware (2021). No less breathtakingly realistic is Evan Penny's patinated bronze bust (2009), which manages to convey not only the tension of the muscles and bone structure but also the sheen of the skin…
MIRROR EFFECT
« How far do you want to push the “truth” of your sculptures? "?", a journalist from Art in America magazine asked John DeAndrea in 1972, one of the pioneers of the genre to whom the Vallois gallery is dedicating an exhibition in Paris. I want them to breathe " he replied. And here we are, faced with this illusion, this deceptive truth, undeniably disturbed, torn between fascination with the perfect illusionism reproducing the human body in its smallest details and a certain repulsion for the morbidity of these inert mannequins…
Blurring the lines between art and reality, beyond the technical prowess of the execution, beyond the meticulous rendering of these non-idealized bodies (from wrinkles to skin texture…), and beyond their “absolute immobility,” might these sculptures not belong to the realm of living art, asks Katell Jaffrès, scientific curator of the exhibition? A form of living art, like theatre, which, by placing us at a distance from ourselves, allows us to look at ourselves differently? »
1 “Hyperrealism. This is not a body”, Maillol Museum, Paris, September 7 – January 8, 2023; “Hyperrealism facing 150 years of art”, Beyeler Foundation, Riehen (Switzerland), October 30 – January 8, 2023
"HYPER SENSITIVE. A LOOK AT HYPERREALISTIC SCULPTURE"
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