Ron Mueck is UNBELIEVABLE! WOW! Did I already say WOW!

Ron Mueck: Hyper-Realist Sculptor

James Cohan Gallery

]]> http://aldorf.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/hyperrealistic-sculptures/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:35:48 +0000 aldorf http://aldorf.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/hyperrealistic-sculptures/

more of this stunning art and craftsmanship here.

Da para un ensayo porque mientas nos asumimos como una sociedad digital, en esencia, la vida sigue siendo la misma. Gesticulamos, nos arrugamos, nuestros ojos reflegan nuestra edad y nuestros sentimientos. No hay herramienta digital que haga inmune el pasar de los días. O por lo menos, no existe. Aún. Hace unos días leí sobre un tal Ron Mueck, un artista reconocido por su especialidad en esta materia. Su intención es expresar el grado superlativo de la realidad. O sea, la híper realidad. Hoy Web Designer Depot, curiosamente, compila a más de un exponente capaz de combinar la fotografía con la escultura. Además del señor Mueck, está Evan Penny, Jamie Salmon, Duane Hanson, Sam Jinks y Adam Bean. A continuación…

de Evan Penny

de Jamie Salmon

de Duane Hanson

de Sam Jinks

de Adam Beane

Febra 39, imi explodeaza capul si mi se lichefiaza muschii. Interesant. Sunt pedepsita in pat, cu o cana verde de ceai, de pe care imi zambeste o vacuta aiurita cu urechile galbene si in care inoata doua macese [macar ele stiu inota]. Care pe care? Doar cana si vaca mai au culoare, in rest totul este gri si sinistru: Clujul vazut de pe geam, cearcanele, lumina becului, apa de la robinet. Imi amintesc de interviul pe care l-am luat unei tipe fan funeral doom, care imi spunea ca telul ei in viata este sa demonstreze ca exista frumusete in cel mai sinistru loc/obiect/om de pe planeta. Ideea: noi trebuie doar sa dam la o parte panza de paianjen tesuta in orbite si sa fim dispusi sa acordam o sansa.

Pentru multi, sinistra este si sculptura lui Ron Mueck.

Este totusi arta si, pentru mine, o manifestare a frumosului. Abandoneaza intr-un sertar al memoriei revistele cu oameni photoshopati, de o perfectiune inumana,  showurile cu vedete de plastic si manechinele inghetate din vitrinele magazinelor si spune-mi de cand nu ti-ai mai privit corpul in oglinda, analizand orice detaliu si iubindu-l pentru ca e al tau si e diferit? Si mai mult, cand ai permis ultima oara cuiva sa-ti patrunda intimitatea si sa te “dezveleasca”?  Nudul stanjeneste, provoaca, indeamna la pacat, iar uneori ingrozeste, mi-ai spune. Sinistru, ti-as raspunde.

I’ve been inactive lately and its been driving me nuts. I am not a “Type A” personality, I know how to relax, I take great pride in the fact that I know how to spend time doing not much of anything — but I prefer to do it on my terms (very bossy) so when a lazy lifestyle is imposed on me, I can go a little stir crazy. So, in the name of using time wisely while doing very little, I’ve just been thinking, thinking, thinking. No conclusions yet, but not a bad use of time.

Last night on WireTap, an excerpt from David Eagleman’s “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives” got me thinking a little more about what I’m doing with my time. The piece suggests that in the afterlife we live our life again but in a different order, determined by how much time we spent doing something over our lifetime. Here are a few examples:

2 months driving in the street in front of your house

7 months of sex

13 straight years of sleep

5 months flipping through magazines while sitting on the toilet

You can listen to it for yourself here.

I’m thinking of assigning a few lifetime hours to reading Eagleman’s book.

(PS. The photo is a sculpture by Ron Mueck called “In Bed”. Great, isn’t it?)

Absolut sehenswert und wirklich fesselnd, die Skulpturen der Künstler Ron Mueck, Evan Penny, Jamie Salmon, Duane Hanson, Sam Jinks and Adam Beane. Sie wirken so real und lebendig.

Hier unbedingt klicken und staunen: Webdesignerdepot “Mind Blowing Hyperrealistic Sculptures”

Hier ein Rundgang durch ein Museum mit Werken von Ron Mueck (leider ist die Qualität des Videos nicht so gut, so dass die Präzision nicht so hervorsticht):

Es handelt sich hierbei um eine Kunstrichtung, die sich Hyperrealismus nennt. Dabei ist eine übersteigerte Darstellung der Realität durchaus Ziel der Arbeiten. Jede Skulptur für sich erzählt eine  komplexe Geschichte. Schaut Euch mal die Posen in ihrem Kontext, die Mimik und was für Typen modelliert wurden länger an. Im ersten Moment wirkte diese krasse Darstellung der Realität etwas befremdlich auf mich, aber neben dem überspitzen Realismus wird noch so viel mehr ausgesagt. Ein Spiegel für uns…

Auch sehr interessant ist die Modellierung der Skulpturen:

On Halloween, I went to this Halloween party with a friend of mine at her school. A little FYI, we don’t go to the university and we met in high school. Anyway, at the party, I noticed this girl who was dressed up as Sarah from Labyrinth. At first, I didn’t know that she was supposed to be Sarah. So, I went up to her and asked her what she was supposed to be. So, she told me and I got it. Apparently, when she told everybody else who she was supposed to be, no one got it until me. I just found it interesting because apparently Labyrinth isn’t that popular with my generation.

Nell’estate del 1997 io e Alessandra eravamo a Londra. Assistemmo a un evento incredibile, il funerale di lady Diana, una delirante autosuggestione di massa, dove la gente piangeva disperata per strada e l’aria era satura dell’odore dei mazzi di fiori appassiti.  Così descrive l’evento Wikipedia:

Il 6 settembre 1997 per le strade di Londra si riversarono circa 3 milioni di persone. Il feretro di Diana fu posto su un affusto di cannone e da Kensington Palace passò per Hyde Park fino a St James’s, dove il principe Carlo, i principi William ed Harry, il principe Filippo, Charles Spencer e i rappresentanti delle tante organizzazioni di cui la principessa era benefattrice, si unirono al corteo dietro la bara. Il pubblico presente al funerale gettò fiori al passaggio del feretro e per tutto il percorso.

I funerali della principessa del Galles furono celebrati nellabbazia di Westminster e durante la cerimonia Elton John cantò una versione modificata per l’occasione di Candle in the Wind. Furono seguiti dalle televisioni di tutto il mondo ed oltre un milione di bouquet furono lasciati davanti al suo appartamento a Kensington [...]

Il giorno del funerale le strade del centro erano state chiuse al traffico, invase da centinaia di migliaia di persone con l’aria afflitta e bouquet primavera. E’ stato uno dei momenti più irreali che abbia mai vissuto (primo classificato: è un’altra vita! è un’altra vita! Frase in codice…).

Il giorno dopo io e Alessandra, non troppo afflitti dall’evento, abbiamo visitato una mostra temporanea alla Royal Academy of Arts. Si intitolava “Sensation!” e raggruppava i nuovi nomi (alcuni già famosetti, altri piuttosto sconosciuti, almeno a me) dell’arte britannica contemporanea. Non sapevamo, allora, che fosse così importante (anche perché, dal titolo, uno poteva pensare a una cazzata spaventosa..). Quindi siamo entrati abbastanza scettici. Devo invece dire che quel che vidi mi piacque parecchio, e che ancora oggi ricordo molte delle opere presenti.

C’era un artista che si era tolto il sangue per vari mesi, lo aveva collezionato, lo aveva semi-congelato e poi plasmato per farne una scultura-autoritratto. Era conservato in una teca-frigo…

Un’altro aveva fatto il ritratto di una assassina di bambini realmente vissuta accostando le sagome di centinaia di manine sulla tela (grande polemica…)

Poi c’era il celebre Damien Hirst,  con un maiale tagliato a metà e separato in due contenitori di vetro pieni di formaldeide e montati su rotaie. A un certo punto una metà si allontanava dall’altra e si vedevano le interiora del maiale. Se non sbaglio si intitolava tipo “Little pig goes shopping, little pig stays home”. Ironico, anche.

Ma ecco che entro in una stanza e subito mi riallaccio alla sensazione di irrealtà provata il giorno prima ai funerali di Lady D. E’ una stanza vuota, se non ricordo male. In mezzo, per terra, vedo qualcosa di lungo, grigio, di circa un metro, ma non vedo esattamente cos’è. Mi avvicino. Disturba. Si tratta un uomo nudo, morto, disteso per terra, lungo circa un metro ma perfettamente proporzionato. E’ questo che lo rende così fastidioso, la sua perfezione e la sua piccolezza. Il titolo dell’opera è Dead dad (papà morto), ed è stata una delle sue prime opere importanti. Per me è geniale. Non mi stupisco che in seguito Ron Mueck sia diventato un artista famoso. Non so se in video fanno le stesso effetto che dal vivo, non credo proprio, ma vi segnalo comunque questo video su Youtube dove potete vedere un montaggio di altre sue sculture. Solo in alcune, però, si percepisce la stranezza del fatto che siano più piccole o più grandi del normale. Io le trovo molto inquietanti ma belllissime.

E in fondo ricordate: la realtà non esiste.

After the inspiration of ‘The Sacred’ exhibit, I landed in the Gallery Shop seeking postcards.  I was drawn by the cover, to a book by Susanna Greeves on Ron Mueck, the hyperrealist sculptor.  It was fascinating for two reasons.  The cover depicts tools arranged on a wall as if in a workshop, but with the addition of a sculpted baby on a peg with them!  I wonder if there could be something in that jarring  juxtaposition for my own tools-work…

Second, the link with the exhibition I had just seen was striking.  Here was Ron centuries later having as near perfected the art of figurative realism as is probably possible.  His work is quite awesome and disconcerting; we see something so familiar and yet so at odds.  The play of scale and perceived ‘ordinariness’ play with our expectations..  The following two images are his and the third is 17th C Spanish (Gregorio Fernandez)

The greatest achievement of the new exhibition at the National Gallery, The Sacred Made Real, is its presentation of the 17^th century Spanish attitude to religion as more than just gory, sordid and self-lacerating. Instead, Christ’s death becomes full of both sorrow and hope. Retribution and redemption. The overstated ennui symbolic of Spanish Catholicism becomes instead a sustained and deeply felt meditation on the subjects of death, suffering, and injustice. The Christian fables become metaphoric and worthy, the emotions worth feeling and remembering. Anyone and everyone will be moved by this exhibition’s startling presentations of distress and anguish, and Christ’s narrative might be seen as the lesson it was originally intended as.

It is the success of these super-realistic works that they inspire emotion in their audience in and of themselves, and looking around this exhibition, even as an atheist, I found myself relating to the works, responding to the storylines delivered in canvas, wood, and paint, not to mention human hair and ivory, even where they were their most brazenly and shockingly sacrificial and Christian.

Pedro de Mena – Christ as the Man of Sorrows (Ecce Homo), 1673

 

In the above work, for instance, the brutality depicted – blood running down Christ’s back from the lacerations and from the crown of thorns – provokes heartfelt compassion. For me, the presented allegory oscillated within my anguished attempt to place my sincere reaction to it with recourse to my deepest problems with the Christian faith and the inherent cruelty of so many of its parables. 

Similarly, Francisco de Zurbarán’s Crucifixion inspired from me an empathetic and tangible response, but as the wonderful accompanying film illustrated at the end of the exhibition, the artistic genius behind it advances the cause enigmatically. Shown in the image below in a mock up of its original setting, the work was originally positioned in a portico of an office, viewable from a window to the right and above… painted with a light source matching its intended light source, the painting looks not only sculptural but life like as the body hangs in its niche privately and forlorn.

Francisco de Zurbarán – Christ on the Cross, 1627

Marcel Duchamp – Étant Donnés, 1946-1966

The attestions of reality reminded me awkwardly of Marcel Duchamp’s great final work Étant Donnés,a work enshrined similarly in privacy, pain, suffering and the unknown. Comparing them feels tantamount to something worse than blasphemy, and yet the comparison seems to hold. It imbues the work with a physicality beyond parable. 

Indeed, just as other works in this exhibition remind of either Ron Mueck’s hyper-realist works, or the self-congratulatory airs of trompe-l’oeil, the whole exhibition became for me again and again an inroad into ways of thinking about non-Christian art, modern art, modern life. Comparative art history with me at the centre enabled me to understand and appreciate the message. The brutality of Christ’s passion became no more enigmatic of suffering than the young woman’s in Duchamp’s masterpiece.

And so, beyond the un-missable and emotionally wrenching manifesto of the exhibition itself, here are a few of my own personal reflections on particular work to be found therein.

***

As one might expect, it was the Velázquez works which truly stood out in the exhibition, and one particularly gave in to my internalised art historical dialogue.

Diego Velázquez, Immaculate Conception, 1618-19

Salvador Dali – Christ of Saint John of the Cross, 1951

In this painting of the immaculate conception, I was struck first and foremost by the surrounds. I remember visiting the Prado in Madrid with my cousin Judith and her Madrileño husband Pablo many years ago. Pablo shared with me some of his and his artist father’s insights into the collection. I particularly remember him drawing my attention to Velázquez’s skies and asking me to keep them in mind, as we walked back out into the Madrid sun and gazed upwards. I was astonished to find one of Madrid’s proudest secrets, and further proof of Velázquez’s talent. Indeed, the skies of the Castillian countryside are oft-referred to as Velasqueños in the master’s honour.

The comparison of the idealised classical world at Mary’s feet and the earthly grounding of the Velasqueño sky makes me for an interesting juxtaposition. Similarly, I thought of Dali’s Christ from the Scottish national collection and wondered about the roots of its details; whether the lake and mountains, or the clouds were Catalunyan. I have long been fascinated by the sheer detailing of Dali’s greatest works, and his declarations of their origins in dreams. I wonder where reality takes hold in this work, and where it took hold in the dreams of this surreal master.

***

Another work in the exhibition, Alonso Cano’s The Vision of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, also caught my eye. It was unavoidably reminiscent of the Murakami work I had seen a week earlier in the Tate’s Pop Life exhibition, Milk,

Alonson Cano - The Vision of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, also known as ‘The Miracle of the Lactation’, 1657-1660

Takashi Murakami – Milk, 2009

 

and this comparison helped me think about the importantly maternal elements of Mary’s character in the bible, and what this stands for more broadly, alongside the improbably maternal elements of this vulgar take on Japanese and contemporary culture. The distinction is startling, and apparently a shocking indictment on both parental and maternal respect in a society ravaged by pop culture.

What they and all the works mentioned above have in common is a distillation of the exhibition at hand’s title. The sacred made real. As I approached the works and my thought processes as they arose from it, it appeared to me that, similarly, and maybe more particularly for an atheist, what the exhibition, and the works viewed out of context achieved was an attestation of the sacred nature of reality. The maternal, the paternal, our brethren, humanity, all of these things are absolute in our lives. Such artistic accomplishments as are on view here only serve to heighten the importance of life, and the recording of it. The talents on offer testify to the need for glorification of the every day, and one one’s trials and tribulations are no more important than another. We are all in this together.

“Real Life” is running from October 17, 2009 – January 24, 2010. I was lucky enough to attend the opening. The exhibition is at The Glenbow Museum.

Hoje nós compilamos uma lista extensa de 22 esculturas modernas que são tão legais quanto bizarras. Essas obras de tridimenionais são tão incríveis quanto os materias que forem utililzados. De esculturas hyper-realistas de Ron Mueck e Duane Hansons até as esculturas em movimento de Peter Jansen e Saúl Hernandéz, cada obra conta uma história interessante.

Ron Mueck



fonte

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Meet Glenbow’s artists-in-residence, local filmmaker Sandi Somers who will debut her 1 minute video and kick off our video challenge and Calgary-based musician Kris Demeanor who will perform new work made in response to Ron Mueck’s hyper-realistic sculptures. 

Learn about Ron Mueck, one of the world’s most exciting sculptors today, during a gallery tour of the Real Life exhibition with curator Jonathan Shaughnessy from the National Gallery of Canada

7:00 pm All welcome! Please RSVP to rsvp@glenbow.org

I was watching this Labryinth music video the other day, which I’m not going to upload because it’s not mine, and I thought to myself, Tim Burton would have been a great director for Labyrinth. I don’t know why I thought that. I think what it is is that Tim Burton’s movies and Labryinth has a very similar aesthetic. The only thing that I would be concerned about would be all the puppet use in Labyrinth. Anyway, that’s just what I think.

Let us dream of metamorphoses whilst considering the work of Ron Mueck.

I was fortunate enough to be there, begrudgingly at the age of nine, for his breakthrough exhibition, Sensation, at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997.  There were many examples of figurative sculpture, but it was his hyper-real brand that shone through the mêlée of Young British Artists, to be lauded by critics and crowds alike.

Mueck’s Dead Dad pierced me at nine years old, forcing me to confront emotions that I had previously never encountered.  It was the first time I had been confronted with the possibility of my father’s death.   To young boys, the father is invincible, a valiant warrior that will always be there to guide and inform.  Mueck shattered this illusion with his starkly entitled cadaver.

Ron Mueck, Dead Dad, 1996-97.

See how Mueck displays his father, he pins him, like Nabokov preparing a butterfly on a setting board.   He is laid bare for all to see.  The only thing missing is a name-tag lovelessly looped around the big toe.

Mueck’s work is not only hyper-realist in look, but it is in texture and pose also.  It is his attention to detail that sets him apart from comtemporaries.   His detail does not simply manifest in the meticulous placing of hairs or creation of pores.  Mueck’s figures don’t just look natural, they are natural.  There are no tell tale signs of the figures’ true identity as fibreglass constructs, other than the name plate to the side that lists the artists name and the work of art.  His skill at working with clay and fibreglass is undoubtedly talismanic, but it is coupled with an eye for composition.  Mueck’s works do not need to be arranged in relation to anything but the viewer and themselves. Mueck shows creativity in his use of scale in composition and his ability to pose his figures in completely authentic positions.

In the chapter of Art in Paris entitled, ‘Why Sculpture is Tiresome’, Charles Baudelaire writes of, a 19th century artist, M. Pradier’s ‘pitiable’ sculpture as lacking ‘graphic imagination’; his talent being ‘cold and academic’.  Baudelaire could not have said the same of Mueck. It is Ron Mueck’s ‘graphic imagination’ that sets him apart from all other sculptors.  Often working from memory, he succeeds in producing the most graphic work we can imagine.  He presents us with vivid images punctuated by explicit detail.

Ron Mueck, Two Women, 2005.

Two women stand together, huddled in slight conversation.  They stand protected, arms folded, bodies facing each other, but glances aside.  They are at the end of their journeys, observing ruefully those just at the beginning.  Mueck expertly crafts not just figures but lives in his sculpture.  The ultra-graphic or hyper-real detail exhibits such revealing aspects as the once open wound of the pierced ear, now healed with age.   A scar that wounds you, the viewer, with a prick similar to that suffered by Barthes whilst theorising his punctum.  The piercing, that once was, pierces us.  The fragile woman instantly transforms from realistic model to a real character, with a deep and layered past and poignantly unknown future.  These details that Mueck reveals, in a way that an artist such as Duane Hanson, who is often mentioned in the same breath, does not, firmly place his work in the world of art and not trade.  Yves Tanguy wrote in Sculpture, ‘a certain freshness and sincerity of vision distinguish him from the blasé irony of many of his contemporaries who also explore strategies of realism’.

Ron Mueck, Two Women detail

It is important to understand Barthes’ punctum to fully appreciate Mueck’s work.  Barthes developed the theory of punctum and studium whilst looking at Koen Wessing’s image of a Nicaraguan Rebellion in 1979. He says, ‘ I understood at once that this photograph’s ‘adventure’ derived from the co-presence of two elements’ , the first presence Barthes talks of is quantifiable, it can be successful or unsuccessful, the first presence is the fact of the photograph, the studium is the agreed standing on the image. In this instance the studium is the representation of a rebellion in Nicaragua in 1979 (Figure 6).

Koen Wessin, Nicaraguan Rebellion, 1979.

Barthes talks of the second element ‘punctuating’ the studium.  The second element is why we go back to pictures and look again, or why our eyes linger over an image longer than is necessary to understand the scene.  The second element is personal; it is an individual view that is felt by the viewer, it is emotive.   ‘A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)’.

Baudelaire writes of a ‘humiliating thing’ that exists within the viewing of sculpture, the spectator can discover ‘a beauty that was not at all the one the artist had in mind’.  This is anything but humiliating; this beauty discovered within a sculpture is what Barthes defines as punctum within the photograph.  Finding punctum within a sculpture indicates the work has taken on a life in a way that the sculptor always dreamed.   Sculpture is animated by punctum.   This moment of animation, the hatching of the real, is profound for the viewer.  It is the same feeling as when reading the work of a fine writer, their characters can leave the narrative and wonder your mind along pathways to places that only you can experience.  For punctum cannot be shared as it won’t be understood by others, ‘this time it is not I who seek it out, it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.’ You cannot redirect this arrow. It comes for you whether you want it or not, it pierces you, you cannot ignore the wound.  It bleeds, but internally, like a bruise.

Although it is ‘the element’ which pierces us, we must however be receptive to it. Nabokov began his lecture on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, ‘of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled.’

You must be willing to dream to understand metamorphosis as more than just an entomological fact. We must try to read it phenomenologically in order to use it as tool to reflect on our own transformation.

“Jamais quis ser um escultor. Não sei bem porque faço isto, mas não me imagino a fazer outra coisa. Não me considero um artista, isto é simplesmente a única coisa que sei fazer.“

Ron Mueck

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/aug/09/comedy.edinburgh20063

Os trabalhos de Ron Mueck escultor australiano, chegam a arrepiar de perfeitas!!

O processo de Mueck e técnicas são uma fonte de fascinação, à observação meticulosa da superfície da pele, seus poros, os folículos de cabelo, a suavidade, a dureza de uma unha e as sombras de veias em baixo da pele, fazem do trabalho de Ron um dos mais perfeitos e reais que já vi.

Suas esculturas nunca são a tamanho real, o que torna seu trabalho ainda mais impressionante.

My girlfriend is pretty awesome. Don’t tell her I said that because then she’ll get all high and mighty and shit. Still, it’s true.

Last weekend she surprised me with tickets to a screening of Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth.” The Silent Movie Theater here in town is hosting screenings of a slew of Henson’s work every Friday and Saturday night in July. It’s the type of shit Muppet nerds like myself drool over.

After some of Henson’s fairy tale-inspired shorts and commercial work, the audience was treated to a screening of “Labyrinth.”

Now, my dad took me to see this in theaters when it was released in 1986. Since then, I’ve probably seen it two or three more times, but always in VHS quality on a small-screen television. Also, it’s probably been ten to fifteen years since I saw it last in any way, shape or form.

That means it had been twenty-three years since I saw it on the big screen. And, wow, seeing it again after all these years has opened my eyes to quite a few details I missed before:

1. Ludo is artist Ron Mueck - Mueck, an Australian artist, is primarily known for his hyper-realistic (and oddly sized) sculptures of humans. Here are a few of his pieces:

But Mueck got his start in model making and puppeteering with Henson. Thing is, I knew Mueck was involved in “Labyrinth,” but I always thought he performed the voice of the dwarf-goblin character Hoggle. (This was actually done by Jim’s son, Brian.) In actuality, Mueck handled the voice work and the puppeteering for both Ludo and a Firey. This means it was Mueck who said, “Smell bad!” about a thousand times while standing in the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Which brings me to my next discovery:

2. The Bog of Eternal Stench is full of assholes - Yeah, I knew it always made fart noises and that stinky sludge would bubble up from the depths of… wherever. But seeing those “holes” on a big screen made me realize that they really look like assholes! It’s not just brown water bubbling up from a hose, folks! This means that someone had to actually physically make these things! I can see this guy’s boss now: “Hey, Ralph! How are those Bog of Eternal Stench assholes coming?”

3. David Bowie’s wiener could be tiny - I used to mistake his huge cod piece as a bulging package. But that’s misleading because, in reality, he could have the tiniest wiener on Earth. You know, like placing a diamond ring in a television box.

4. The labyrinth is covered in glitter - Literally. I kept thinking of that scene in “Little Shop of Horrors” when Audrey uses spray glue on a floral arrangement, and then haphazardly throws a handful of glitter over the whole mess. Oddly enough, “Little Shop” also came out in 1986. Must have been a big year for the glitter industry.

5. Jennifer Connelly was young - I remember being young and thinking that she was too old to be playing with dolls. And now I’m old and think that she’s too young to not be playing with them.

6. Elmo is a Firey - One of the Fireys is voiced by puppeteer Kevin Clash, who also does the voice of Elmo on “Sesame Street.” If you listen closely, though, you’ll notice that it’s Elmo’s voice being used long before he was even created.

7. The baby, Troy, is actually artist Brian Froud’s son - Which is good, because dancing with David Bowie in tights would surely make a serial killer out of any normal child.

8. The Henson Company’s puppeteering is at its peak - This might seriously be the zenith for the Henson team when it comes to how they handle their puppeteering. Matched only by what they accomplished in 1982’s “The Dark Crystal,” this is the company’s work at its finest.

9. The best scene is when Sarah falls down a hole and has a conversation with the Helping Hands - Seriously. Check it out for yourself:

10. It’s honestly a good film - Yeah, parts of it are cheesy, and a lot of it is steeped heavily in the now-laughable decade of the eighties, but it still holds up as great storytelling with interesting characters and amazing visuals. A lot of the crap made today could learn something from the structure of “Labyrinth.”

Dance, magic dance,

-Shady

PS: A funny side note: During the opening credits, people in the audience would clap as each contributor’s name popped up onscreen: Jim Henson, followed by clapping; Brian Froud, followed by clapping; etc. Then George Lucas’ name popped up. One guy booed loudly, and the rest of the audience supported his cause by bursting into laughter. Awesome.

Alan Groves is an amazing sculptor and dinosaur/creature creator. His began his career in film during the 1980s with the Jim Henson Co. His journey has taken him on a different path now creating impressive life size dinosaur sculptures for displays and National Geograpic pictorials.

Here are some excerpts from GoreMaster.com’s interview with Alan Groves:

GM:  How have you gotten work in the industry?

     Alan:   ”To get work in the film or television industry you have to keep at it. It’s a full time job, which takes constant long hours and hard work. Never give up. It’s a tough career, but nevertheless a very rewarding one.”

GoreMaster: How did you get started working in the Special Effects industry?

     Alan:  ”I got a job on Labyrinth (1986) with Jim Henson. I was in the right place at the right time.”

Alan Groves: ….”Try not to stick to one area of expertise.  Most people just want to sculpt and apply make up. Find out about animatronics, robotics, pyrotechnics and physical effects. Learn how to make plaster and silicone moulds. The more you know, the more you have to offer”

Alan talks about working with earthenware clays, sulphur free plasteline (Chavant NSP medium), silicone rubbers (Wacker and Dow Corning) and isophthalic resins with fiberglass and more!

GoreMaster.com http://www.goremaster.com is a site dedicated to special effects artists, creature creators, makeup gurus and the films, television shows, and theater productions they enhance and make fun!

Sam Jinks é hiperrealista, contemporâneo, e tem uma arte parecida com a do Ron Mueck. Acho incrível como tudo é feito com silicone e cabelos humanos. Essa obra, abaixo, parece uma releitura grotesca da Pietà do Mich.

Ron Mueck

Rubber Doll

Alors pour celui ci, Mylène et moi sommes en désaccord. Je trouve le travail pictural intéressant, les lignes douces, j’aime particulièrement le mélange entre l’univers enfantin et la dimension sexuelle des adultes. Trevor Brown, est un artiste britannique vivant et travaillant au Japon, dont le travail explore des paraphilies, telles que la pédophilie, le BDSM, et d’autres thèmes fétichistes, avec un esprit peu commun.

Rubber Doll

WHAT ?

Impasses et impostures

7 jours dans...

collectionneurs

Vous, ou votre maman, papa, grande tante, collectionne les serviettes, les poupées, les clés de 12, don’t worry ! Tout a une explication !

Bonne lecture à tous et toutes !