Two Chinese Artists Created This Terrifying Hyper-realistic Sculpture Of The Falling Angel

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s works always start with a paradox. Their early objects and installations are made from real cadavers or human fat tissues. Yet, even though playing on the speculative and the spectacular, they focus on the investigation of the paradox rather than merely exploiting the spectacular.

The tension between the bodies, organic tissues or animals and their artistic manifestations corresponds to the transposition of subjects from the plane of immanence onto the plane of transcendence.

In their recent installations using hyper-realistic sculpture, they reverse their original practice: imagination and mythological subjects penetrate into the realm of everyday life and reality.

Angel, a life-size sculpture in fiber-reinforced polymer and silica gel of a fallen angel is typical of this new approach.

The angel, an old woman in a white gown and with featherless wings, is lying face-down on the ground; maybe sleeping, maybe dead, but certainly immobile and frozen into an all too realistic image.

The supernatural being, now nothing more than an impotent creature, can neither carry out any supreme will nor be of any help to those believing in its existence. The angel is true but ineffective; dreams and hopes are sincere yet vain.