The only public institution in France that is home to a work by the American sculptor Duane Hanson, the Musée d’arts de Nantes made the decision, for this volume, to move beyond a historical overview of this meticulously realistic form of figurative art in order to affirm the profoundly human and sensitive character of hyperrealistic sculpture.
Caught between emotion and fascination, acceptance and rejection, eleven Western sculptors, making full or partial use of hyperrealistic representation, are brought together here. While Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea embody the beginnings of hyperrealism, this illustrated catalogue – including some never-before-seen works – underscores as well the importance of the oeuvre of Gilles Barbier, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Daniel Firman, Sam Jinks, Tony Matelli, Sanaa Murtti, Evan Penny, Marc Sijan, and Tip Toland. Each of their works, in its own way, echoes the challenges facing sculpture and portraiture in placing the social, sensitive, and unique individual at the centre of the artistic process. The human being, in all his complexity, becomes the source of creation.
To contextualise, illuminate, and analyse these challenges in depth, the perspective of the curator Katell Jaffrès encounters the historical and phenomenological approaches of the art historian Didier Semin and the philosopher Charles Bobant. Essays, sculptures, and images thus question our representations of bodies, individualities, and sensibilities.

Contents

Preface
Johanna Rolland

Foreword
Sophie Lévy

Hyper sensitive
A Perspective on Hyperrealistic Sculpture
Katell Jaffrès

The Sum of All Shames
Didier Semin

The World of the Other
On Hyperrealistic Sculpture
Charles Bobant

Something Real from Something Fake

Bodies, Fictions, Mirror

The Paradox of the Invisible

Biographies of exhibited artists

List of exhibited works
Selected bibliography
Index of names
Colophon
Acknowledgements
Photo Credits

The artists exhibited:
Gilles Barbier, Berlinde De Bruyckere, John DeAndrea, Daniel Firman, Duane Hanson, Sam Jinks, Tony Matelli, Saana Murtti, Evan Penny, Marc Sijan, Tip Toland