Technique: Acrylic on canvas / Measures: 114 x 78 cm - MNBA

Wth photographic precision, Bony (Argentina, 1941-2002) depicts a wrinkled piece of paper. The connection between painting and photography makes this work an example of hyperrealism. If we pay close attention to the details, the creases, the use of lights and shadows, we doubt whether it's really a painting or a photo. 

Mask II, by Ron Mueck (2002)

Materials: resin, glass fiber, polyester / Measures: 77 x 120 x 85 cm

Fundación Proa

Ron Mueck's sculptures (Melbourne, 1958), eight of which are actually on display at an exhibition at Fundación Proa in La Boca,  are outstanding for its admirable precision in detailing. 

Mask II is the artist's selfportrait, although he denies it. Has it not been for it's unreal size, the sculpture would be his exact face, even to the smallest of details. It seems as if it would be opening its eyes any minute to question the public looking at it...

Mask (detail), by Ron Mueck (2002)

Materials: resin, glass fiber, polyester / Measures: 77 x 120 x 85 cm

Fundación Proa

The choice of title is also quite correct. It's surprising that such real face can be so thin. Maybe he expects us to take the mask and place it over our face so that we can become Ron Mueck.

One may say the works of this artist are hyperrealist, but it's not so, because although realist in detailing, they are unreal in size. Grazia Quaroni, curator of the exhibition, says that Mueck's "is a very strange form of realism." His works do not cherish Academic beauty but instead deepen the features of pain, tiredness, old age, etc. 

Go on reading… Art Now, The new directory to 136 international contemporary artists, Vol 2. Taschen, Koln, 2005.