Duane Hanson: More than Reality. This item is unavailable.Duane Hanson: More than Reality

Wrinkles, facial hair, varicose veins, and fingernail dirt are hardly the bodily stuff of your average figurative sculpture, be it a Praxiteles or a Rodin. But Duane Hanson was never after the ideal figure, merely the familiar one, one so recognizable it is often mistaken for the flesh-and-blood waitress, house painter or cop it so vividly, eerily depicts in polyester resin. Clothed in the most exacting of detail, down to their hidden underpants, Hanson's sculptures compell an endless, prying looking into the folds and moods of his subjects. More Than Reality, the first catalogue raisonne of his sculptures, reveals that Hanson's objective was never blatant voyeurism but the opening of a view onto those things we prefer to overlook: the drabness of everyday life, the dullness of common states of mind, the inevitability of mortality.

Born in the dairy country of Minnesota in 1925, Duane Hanson is known the world over for his life-sized fiberglass and polyester resin sculptures. His call to art came early, when he carved a realistic wooden replica of Thomas Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy". In 1965 he moved to Florida, where he lived until his death in 1996.