Before the threat of deep fakes and artificial intelligence, people had to go to great lengths to convey the likeness of famous folk. Landon Meier’s masks are simultaneously breathtaking and haunting – none more so than his famous “Crying Baby”.
Despite now hand-making over 1,000 creations, it didn’t look like Landon Meier was going to spend his life sculpting terrifying maks. He’d always had a fascination with the surreal, but his first forrays into professional life were miles away from what he does now. Working in pizza delivery, picture framing and as a loan officer, it was only once he got laid off that he found his true calling.
The masks are, in Meier’s own words, “disturbingly realistic”. With a never-ending amount of different subjects and expressions, he calls faces “the most important subject matter in art”. The masks are “wearable art” and footage of them being worn in public has gone viral.
Unsurprisingly, art of this standard doesn’t come cheap. Back in 2017, they were costing around $4,500. His studio Hyperflesh was filled with famous faces such as Tom Brady, Mike Tyson and Breaking Bad’s Walter White.
That same year, Meier also created Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He sent these creations alongside Donald Trump’s face to Monsterapalooza – an annual convention focusing on horror and make-up work – to rather terrifying effect. It seems unlikely that Putin, Trump and Kim Jong Un ever end up in the same room, in which case Meier’s work is the closest we’ll come to being able to imagine that scenario.
But surely the nightmarish babies have to be Meier’s most memorable creation.
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Meier’s artwork takes the meaning of the word ‘mask’ quite literally. What does it mean to you? It was André Berthiaume who said: “We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin”.
A few years ago, we made a play on words video inspired by this quote. Check it out below.
