Reshaped Reality, 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Sculpture

Reshaped Reality, 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Sculpture

Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain: June 07 – September 26, 2016
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico: October 15, 2016 – January 08, 2017
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Denmark: February 04 – August 06, 2017

Hyperrealistic sculptures emulate the forms, contours and textures of the human body or singular body parts and thereby create a convincing visual illusion of human physicality. From the late 1960s on, different sculptors got involved with a mode of realism based on the physically lifelike appearance of the human body.

By deploying traditional techniques of modelling, casting, and painting in order to recreate human figures they followed different approaches towards a contemporary form of figural realism.

Based on a selection of around 30 hyperrealistic sculptures by 24 pioneering international artists the exhibition shall display the development of the human figure in hyperrealistic sculpture during the last 50 years.The selection shall reveal five different key issues in the approach towards the depiction of figural realism in order to emphasize how the way we see our bodies has been subject to constant change.