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This article is about the art movement of Hyperrealism. In painting and sculpture the phrase "Hyperrealism" is used to describe a photorealistic rendering of people, landscapes and scenes.

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Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high resolution digital photograph. Not to be confused with Photorealism, Hyperrealism is a fully-fledged school of art with few similarities to the established American school of Photorealism of the 1970’s. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has recently developed since the early 2000s.

The word Hyperealisme was created by Isy Brachot in 1973 as a French word meaning Photorealism. It was the title of a major catalog and exhibition at his gallery in Brussels Belgium in that year. The exhibition was primarily made up of the American Photorealists, such as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Robert Bechtle and Richard McLean. ^[1] But it also included important European influential artists such as Gnoli, Richter, Klapheck and Delcol. Hyperealisme has been since used by European artists and dealers to apply to painters influenced by the Photorealists. Almost 30 years later Hyperrealist painter Denis Peterson rejuvenated the term to apply to a new splinter group of artists whose pioneering works are universally viewed as an offshoot movement of Photorealism.

Early 21st century Hyperrealism was founded upon the aesthetic principles of Photorealism. However, it is starkly contrasted with the literal approach found in traditional photorealist paintings of the late 20th century. Despite any apparent similarities, the two styles are distinctly apart from one another. Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that unlike Photorealism, often is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, often omitting or abstracting certain finite detail in order to maintain a consistent overall pictorial design. They often consciously omitted human emotion, political value and narrative elements. The photorealistic style of painting was uniquely tight, precise, and sharply mechanical with an emphasis on mundane everyday imagery, as it was an evolvement from Pop Art. ^[2]

Hyperrealism, on the other hand, although photographic in essence, can often entail a softer and much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyperrealism paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a new reality not seen in the original photo. That is not to say that they are surreal, as the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects and shadows are painted to appear clearer and more distinct than the reference photo or even the actual subject itself.

Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, ”the simulation of something which never really existed.” ^[3] As such, Hyperrealists create a false reality that is a convincing illusion; one based upon a simulation of reality (the digital photograph). Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are an outgrowth of extremely high resolution images produced by digital cameras and displayed on computers. As Photorealism emulated analog photography, Hyperrealism utilizes digital imagery and expands upon it to create a new sense of reality. Hyperrealistic paintings and sculptures confront the viewer with the illusion of manipulated high resolution images though more meticulous.

As such, Hyperrealists reject the superficiality of illusion in Photorealism, choosing instead to explore more spatially dynamic images in much greater detail and precision. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are not strict interpretations of photographs, nor are they literal illustrations of a particular scene or subject. Instead, they utilize additional, often subtle, pictorial elements to create the illusion of a reality which in fact either does not exist or cannot be seen by the human eye. Furthermore, they may incorporate emotional, social, cultural and political thematic elements as an extension of the painted visual illusion; a distinct departure from the older and considerably more literal school of Photorealism.

Hyperrealist painters and sculptors make allowances for some mechanical means of transferring images to the canvas or mold, including preliminary drawings or grisaille underpaintings and molds. Photographic slide projections or multi media projectors are used to project images onto canvases and rudimentary techniques such as gridding may also be used to ensure accuracy. Sculptures utilize polyesters applied directly onto the human body or mold. Hyperrealism requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate a false reality. As such, Hyperrealism incorporates and often capitalizes upon photographic limitations such as depth of field, perspective and range of focus. Anomalies found in digital images, such as fractalization, are also exploited to emphasize their digital origins by some Hyperrealist painters, such as Denis Peterson, Istvan Sandorfi, Bert Monroy and Alicia St. Rose.

Subject matter ranges from portraits, figurative art, still life, landscapes, cityscapes and narrative scenes. The more recent hyperrealist style is much more literal than Photorealism as to exact pictorial detail with an emphasis on social, cultural or political themes. This also is in stark contrast to the newer concurrent Photorealism with its continued avoidance of photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context.

Some hyperrealists have exposed totalitarian regimes and third world military governments through their narrative depictions of the legacy of hatred and intolerance. Denis Peterson, Gottfried Helnwein and Latif Maulan depicted political and cultural deviations of societal decadence in their work. Peterson's work focused on diasporas, genocides and refugees.^[4] Helnwein developed unconventionally narrative work that centered around past, present and future deviations of the Holocaust. Maulan’s work is primarily a critique of society’s apparent disregard for the helpless, the needy and the disenfranchised.

Provocative subjects include enigmatic imagery of genocides, their tragic aftermath and the ideological consequences. ^{[5] [6]} Thematically, these controversial hyperreal artists aggressively confronted the corrupted human condition through narrative paintings as a phenomenological medium. These lifelike paintings are an historical commentary on the grotesque mistreatment of human beings. ^{[7] [8]}

Hyperreal paintings and sculptures further create a tangible solidity and physical presence through subtle lighting and shading effects. Shapes, forms and areas closest to the forefront of the image visually appear beyond the frontal plane of the canvas; and in the case of sculptures, details have more clarity than in nature. Hyperrealistic images are typically ten to twenty times the size of the original photographic reference source, yet retain an extremely high resolution in color, precision and detail. Many of the paintings are achieved with an airbrush, using acrylics, oils or a combination of both. Ron Mueck’s lifelike sculptures are scaled much larger than life and finished in incredibly convincing detail through the meticulous use of polyester resins and multiple molds. Bert Monroy’s digital images appear to be actual paintings taken from photographs, yet they are fully created on computers.

• Robert Bechtle
• Jacques Bodin
• Claudio Bravo
• Lester Cadalso
• Pedro Campos
• Eric Christensen
• Chuck Close
• Gilles Esnault
• Duane Hanson
• Gottfried Helnwein
• Simon Hennessey
• Guy Johnson
• Antonio López García
• Sebastian Kruger
• Latif Maulan
• Luding Meng
• Rob Milliken
• Bert Monroy
• Ron Mueck
• Juan Nieto
• Denis Peterson
• Alicia St. Rose
• Istvan Sandorfi
• Suzana Stojanovic
• Luciano Ventrone
• Sergio Ceron