Ron Mueck

The Fondation Cartier was the first institution in France to feature a solo exhibition by Mueck in 2005, and went on to do two more, in 2013, and 2023, respectively. These three exhibitions all lead to several acquisitions, and today the Fondation Cartier remains the only French institution to have Mueck's works in their collection.

After having worked in cinema and television creating puppets and mannequins, he truly debuted his artistic career in 1996, when he created a sculpture of Pinocchio, which was commissioned by artist Paula Rego. The following year, his sculpture Dead Dad (1996–1997) was one of the most significant pieces in the exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection. In 2001, his work Boy (1999) was shown at the 49th Venice Biennale. He has developed an oeuvre that touches upon the universal and has profoundly revamped contemporary sculpture with his realistic works whose unexpected dimensions leave the viewer with a sense of disturbing strangeness. Each of his sculptures requires several months, sometimes years, to create. Nevertheless, he has still managed to produce a corpus of forty-eight works in about a quarter century.