Exhibiting those signature hyper-real qualities of Ron Mueck’s singular oeuvre, Untitled (Baby) from 2000 exemplifies the artist’s practice as an art of narrative and whole-hearted emotion. Taking humanity as his entire theme, Mueck’s sculptural practice exclusively focuses on the bodily figure. Ranging in size, shape, and depicted age, Mueck’s oeuvre aims to capture those feelings and sensations associated with key moments defining our passage through life from birth to death. With an almost unparalleled eye, Mueck’s figures capture physical and psychological details that are both painstakingly individual and viscerally universal. With uncanny realism and minute detail, Mueck’s Untitled (Baby) affronts the viewer, making one acutely aware of the feeling of being in their own skin.

Marvelled by the “alien strangeness of these raw and brand-new creatures,” the figure of Untitled (Baby) takes its inspiration from an image of a newborn held aloft by its feet, moments after birth, which Mueck found in a medical textbook (Susanna Greeves, Ron Mueck: A Girl, Malaga 2007, p. 75). At the same time, the imagery of the infant child is inextricably linked with the biblical iconography of the Virgin Mary and infant Christ. While a traditional subject of art history, Mueck was struck by how inaccurately these classical depictions resemble actual newborns. With astonishing realism, Mueck’s Untitled (Baby) departs from art historical precedent, portraying the newborn in all its physical strangeness. Mounted upright on the wall, the positioning of the infant child visually echoes that of the crucified Christ nailed to the cross. In Renaissance depictions of Madonna and Child, the figure of the infant Christ may be interpreted as a foreshadowing of his eventual sacrifice. Capturing the individual in the first moments of existence, Mueck’s Untitled (Baby) simultaneously foreshadows the inevitable end in which we all will meet through allusions to religious iconography.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Mueck’s career began as a model maker and puppeteer for Jim Henson in New York and London, however it was in London that Mueck focused on his artistic practice. Mueck first gained international attention in 1997 for his sculpture Dead dad which was exhibited as part of the infamous Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy in London. Pale, naked, and piteously half-sized, Dead dad lays on a slab like a body in the morgue, poised in the stillness of death. The poignancy of Mueck’s work, which embodies the artists personal loss, also speaks to universal experiences of the bonds between parents and children. Encompassing vulnerability, loss, and alienation, the embedded presence of a soul within his sculptural output animates forth with life. As an outstanding example of Mueck’s practice, Untitled (Baby) is at once uniquely compelling and elicits a deeply empathetic engagement.