Ron Mueck, Mass. Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 2018 Installation view: Ron Mueck, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2026 Photo: Masaya Yoshimura. Photo courtesy: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
A major retrospective of Australian sculpture, Ron Mueck, is currently on display at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi. The exhibition travels to Tokyo after stops in Paris, Milan, and Seoul. It has been co-organized by the Fondation Cartier Pour l'art Contemporain.
Ron Mueck was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1958. He initially worked in model-making and special effects for film and television, before becoming a fine artist in the mid-1990s. His film and television career included a stint at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, the acclaimed and influential studio founded by Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets.
Mueck's sculpture reflects his roots in model-making. His artworks are extraordinarily detailed and beautifully crafted. They are commonly figurative sculptures presented in unusual or surreal situations, open to individual interpretation.
Mueck announced his presence as a fine artist at the 1997 exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Since then, the complexity of his creations has kept his output low. Over 30 years, he has produced only about 50 works, eleven of which are included in the exhibition.
In conversation with Japan Forward, Associate Curator of the exhibition, Charlie Clarke, explained that Mueck has always had a receptive audience in Japan due to Japan's strong culture of craftsmanship and its love of figurines. This is Ron Mueck's second solo exhibition in Japan, following a 2008 retrospective at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa.
Collection: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, New Zealand
Installation view: Ron Mueck, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2026
Photo: Masaya Yoshimura. Photo courtesy: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
Sticks, Fairies, and Skulls
The exhibition begins with Woman with Sticks, in which a naked woman struggles with a large bundle of sticks. It is a scene out of a fairytale, but what is the tale? Why is she naked? What is her quest? Woman with Sticks exemplifies Mueck's well-known trait of deliberate ambiguity, inviting the viewer to construct their own narrative.
Charlie Clarke further stresses that Mueck considers the experience of viewing sculpture to be more than just the object itself. The setting is also key. Accordingly, Angel, an early Mueck masterpiece, was installed in the gallery room on the 53rd floor of the Mori Art Museum, which features a window overlooking central Tokyo. The winged figure sits in natural light on a stool, looking downward and lost in thought, high above the city. It is an atypical representation of a celestial being.
The exhibition highlight is Mass, which is making its Japan Premiere. It consists of 100 giant human skulls. Mass was first exhibited in Melbourne in 2017, but the configuration of each subsequent presentation has been strongly determined by the opportunities and limitations of the gallery in which it is shown.
When exhibited in South Korea, the skulls were predominantly stacked up against a wall. In the present configuration, the viewer meanders through the piled skulls. It reminded this viewer of walking along the edge of a rocky coastline in which the rocks spill onto the beach. Others may interpret the experience completely differently.
The exhibitions also include revealing photographs and films by French photographer and filmmaker Gautier, which help explain how Ron Mueck's extraordinary sculptures have been created. It will run through the summer until September 23.
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Author: Paul de Vries
