sculptures as real as nature amaze visitors

The exhibition hyper sensitive brings together around thirty works by 11 international artists, some of which are unpublished. Sculptures of men and women that are a faithful reproduction of the human body and its postures. A mirror effect that can disconcert.

Striking details

Skin texture, eyelashes or even wrinkles are very precise. The old lady by American artist Tip Toland has her cheeks puffed up with air, her eyes wide. She seems as alive as the visitors who pass in front of her and stop dumbfounded. “It’s pretty crazy. They are just sculptures and yet there is a real emotion that emerges”, explains a young man. It is thanks to the attention paid to details and to the materials used (bronze, sandstone, resin or silicone) that the artists of the hyperrealist movement manage to obtain so much realism. They do not idealize the representation of the body. As a result, everyone can project themselves, identify themselves. “It’s almost disturbing to see these characters watching us,” says a visitor.

A tricked guardian

Hyperrealist sculpture was born in the United States in the 1960s. The movement has experienced renewed interest over the past thirty years. In France, it is an art that is rarely presented to the public even if, until last March, the Maillol museum in Paris hosted the international traveling exhibition Hyperrealism, this is not a body. The Musée d’arts de Nantes is the only French public collection to hold a sculpture by the American artist Duane Hanson, one of the precursors of hyperrealist sculpture. Its famous Flea Market Lady left the museum’s reserves to join the other sculptures from all over the world on loan for the exhibition.

Sitting on a chair, the woman from the flea market played a funny trick on a security guard. “One evening, when closing the rooms, he spoke to this lady. Obviously, these are very humorous situations which also reveal this relationship between the real and the unreal”, says Katell Jaffrès, curator of the exhibition.

Exposure hyper sensitiveNantes Museum of Arts, 10 rue Georges Clemenceau; until September 3, 2023, open every day except Tuesday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., late opening until 9 p.m. on Thursday.