Capturing Contemporary

Capturing Contemporary examines the process of learning and unlearning Western art through acts of copying, reconstruction and deconstruction. Presented as a solo booth within an art fair, the project revisits canonical works of Western art through the perspective of a Southeast Asian artist whose early understanding of Western art history was largely shaped by reproductions rather than encounters with original artworks.

Before digital images became widely accessible, much of this learning took place through repeatedly reproduced images in books, magazines and other printed materials, often with limited resolution and incomplete historical context. These fragmented sources became the basis through which Western artistic ideals, techniques and standards of beauty were understood and internalised. The project reflects on the irony of becoming more familiar with the history of Western art than with the histories and cultural environments of one's own locality.

Through processes of making and unmaking, Seah reinterprets familiar masterpieces, questioning the authority of the original and the assumptions embedded in artistic education. Copying becomes both an act of learning and a means of undoing what has been learned. Rather than attempting faithful reproductions, the works expose the gaps, distortions and uncertainties through which artistic knowledge is transmitted.

One of the works references Laocoön and His Sons, an ancient sculptural group whose missing arm became the subject of centuries of reconstruction and debate. Its shifting restorations reveal how even an iconic masterpiece can be shaped by speculation, interpretation and changing ideas of artistic correctness.

Within the commercial setting of an art fair, where painting continues to occupy a prominent position, the project also questions the persistence of established artistic formats and values. A transparent fishing net suspended among the works invites visitors to move through it, complicating the relationship between viewing and being captured. The net becomes both a physical intervention and a metaphor for the systems of artistic education, cultural inheritance and market expectations through which art and its audiences are continually framed.