Held A text by Justin Paton on Ron Mueck

Since 1996, Australian artist Ron Mueck has been developing a personal, strange, and powerful body of work that has profoundly renewed the question of contemporary sculpture. His human figures, excessively realistic, but which play on surprising changes of scale, stand apart from both academic naturalism and hyperrealism. The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has organized three personal exhibitions of the artist in the building on boulevard Raspail in 2005, 2013, and 2023, all of which have set record attendance. Ron Mueck’s catalogue raisonné published by the Fondation Cartier in 2023 offers a dive into this unclassifiable work, between the real universe and the phantasmagorical world, which fascinates as much as it disturbs. Among the contributions gathered in the book, Justin Paton’s essay explores the themes of intimacy and solitude through the study of three sculptures created by Ron Mueck in 2013: Couple Under an Umbrella, Woman with Shopping, and Young Couple.