Take my all time favourite sculpter for example. Ron Mueck, Australian, has the most amazing talent of showcasing the imperfection of the human body. The only work I have seen of his in person is Pregnant Woman (2002) and I think I just looked at it for about 20min. I've said it before and I'll say it again: at any moment during those 20 minutes, I was expecting this 8ft tall, very pregnant woman to exhale, lift her head and open her eyes. She was that realistic.
Mueck doesn't just deal with over large, life-like sculptures. Two women shows two little old ladies, ovbiously talking together (sharing secrets it looks like) and they are about half size, yet perfectly in proportion and detail. I imagine them talking about the Old Country, before they had to flee it and the Communist regime!
And the baby... Well, he's just so damn cute. Agreeably ugly, and all that.
Another modern artist I adore is Bonnie Holland. A photographer from England, I love her use of colour, surrealism and clarity in her work. Sounds wanky, but that's what I love about the photos. My previous profile pic was one of hers.
And now, I can add another to this very short list of esteemed individuals who have managed to thaw a heart frozen to modern art: Brian Dettmer. This guy, from The US, takes old books, carves them out and shows their guts. Book autopsies, as it were. He uses old textbooks, dictionaries, atlases, etc, seals the pages together and dissects them through. What you see in the finished product, he has coaxed from within the pages to allow books destined for landfill to tell their tale anew.
Besides, it's pretty bloody funky!
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