Sembra vivo!

This unique exhibition tells the incredible international hyper-realistic sculpture through the most important contemporary artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Ron Mueck, George Segal, and Carole Feuerman.

Palazzo Bonaparte hosts Sembra vivo!: 43 mega-installations, impressive sculptures with such realistic details that it will be difficult to distinguish a natural body from a work of art.

The 29 exhibited artists are the most influential international protagonists: from Maurizio Cattelan (with his iconic works such as the Pigeons of the "Ghosts" installation or the famous banana, better known as "Comedian") to Ron Mueck, who exhibits even a giant "Dark Place" man's head, right down to George Segal, Carole Feuerman, Duane Hanson and many, many more.

We know that the sculptures are not authentic, yet the skin, the hair, the beards, and the fingers tell us otherwise. The naked bodies scandalize us,  eyes hypnotize us, and those dimensions - sometimes completely in scale and sometimes wrong - confuse us: They seem alive! Are they real?

The exhibition reveals the international character of the hyper-realist movement, which, from the 70s onwards, has constantly evolved by adopting ever-new and varied techniques of modelling, fusion, and painting of matter to reach ever-higher levels in the realistic representation of the human figure, emulating the shapes, contours, and textures of the human body or its parts creating a stunning visual illusion and extreme lifelikeness.

Sembra vivo! is a "supervision" exhibition; between art and philosophy, it  leads you to a reflection on the meaning of the essence of the visible through anonymous life-size works and figures that reproduce - in an almost maniacal way - reality, with great attention to the tiniest details that create an almost surreal impact. You will automatically be led to wonder about the efficacy of mimesis and the veracity of illusion in a representation that goes beyond Realism and the sense of what is true.