From The Contortion of Reality to the Sinister: The Uncomfortable Hyperrealism of Mannequins, Dolls, Effigies and Wax Figures

Ceroplastics can offer very realistic and strongly evocative works, arousing sensations that can range from adoration to absolute repulsion. Precisely in this duality resides the proximity of the wax sculpture to the effects of the fantastic: this medium often plays with a semblance of verisimilitude, contrasting reality with the impossible - however much it may seem, the statues can not be alive -, that generates uneasiness that links to the fantastic. Often present in literature, this art is usually associated with the concept of the unsettling double, the Doppelgänger of which Freud talked, emphasising the type of psychological response that ceroplastics provoke in the viewer. Thus, we can argue that the link between wax sculpture and the fantastic can be explained from the aesthetic categories of the sinister and the idea of the Uncanny Valley coined by Masahiro Mori.