You can never unsee a Ron Mueck sculpture.

Upon first look these colossal sculptures of incredibly life-like humans are burned into your brain forever. Mueck sculptures are like representations of our purest emotions in their rawest form. The work In Bed for example is a 21-foot-tall sculpture of a worried mom - a universal feeling if there ever was one, even if you’ve never actually procreated (where my dog moms at?). Everyone has that curler-donning, finger-tapping, chardonnay-sipping, insomniac of a maternal worry-wart inside of them.

Mueck was born in Australia in 1958 and started his artistic career as a puppeteer and puppet maker. It wasn’t the fab art life that Mueck wanted, so he moved all the way to London where he began to collaborate with his mother-in-law. She introduced him to all the right people which led him to commissions and eventually a spot in a show at the Royal Academy that traveled all over the world. And he’s been an art world hot shot ever since, exhibiting at venues like the Venice Biennale or whatever.

Despite his fame, Mueck has gotten some really mixed reviews for his work. A critic at The Guardian, Jonathan Jones very bluntly stated, “The sickness I felt was at the prospect of having to waste time, and words, on this flimsy gimcrack charade, on having to walk around with a straight face and pretend this is an exhibition. Of art.” He goes on to say that if you like this, then you should probably make yourself more familiar with “good” art and then return with a more informed perspective. The whole critique smells like emotional constipation and it was definitely Jonathan Jones’ inner Big Man who wrote the article. We all have one of those too.

Ron Mueck, an Australian-born German sculptor, wasn’t always a hotshot artist. His career actually started as a puppeteer, which led him to work on several children’s shows. He was a voice actor in the trippy kid’s movie Labyrinth and made models for Jim Henson.

Mueck started his own animatronics company where he made pops for advertising companies. He became interested in making sculptures that don’t just look good on camera, but are hyperrealistic in person, too. These sculptures play with scale, and he is most famous for his huge human figures which are sometimes a complete body, and at other times just a part of one. Mueck also makes his bodies smaller than reality, like the piece Dead Dad which is a portrait of his deceased father at about 75% normal size. Creepily enough, he used his own hair for that one.