Making

In a fine art classroom in Malaysia, plaster casts of classical European sculptures continue to serve as models for learning how to draw, observe and understand the human form. Many are reproductions of earlier reproductions, their details gradually lost through successive generations of moulding. Others have been chipped, fractured or broken through years of handling. Despite their imperfections, these objects remain familiar references through which artistic knowledge and aesthetic judgement are taught.

Seah became increasingly drawn to these damaged casts, questioning why their incomplete forms could sometimes appear more compelling than their intact counterparts. Sculptures such as the Venus de Milo, Belvedere Torso and Michelangelo's Slaves suggest that the absence of certain details does not necessarily diminish a work's aesthetic possibilities. When a figure loses its familiar gestures or anatomical completeness, the viewer is no longer occupied solely with recognising what is represented. What remains may invite a different kind of attention, directed towards form, absence and the act of looking itself.

In three paintings on aluminium, Seah revisits these classical figures through fragmentation and reconstruction. Using oil paint and gold leaf on reflective industrial surfaces, he interrupts their familiar appearances rather than attempting to restore an imagined original.

In Mould it Yourself, visitors were invited to break, grind and remould discarded plaster casts. The fragments were reduced to powder, mixed with other materials and poured into moulds associated with familiar local foods and festive traditions, including mooncakes. Through this process, the substance of a European classical sculpture could acquire the form of an entirely different cultural object.

In Way Out, broken plaster fragments were supported by discarded paintbrushes, appearing to move in procession towards the gallery exit. Outside, on an earthen slope, other fragments became containers for tropical plants, including banana and papaya. Planted into the cavities of the broken casts, these species transformed the remains of European classical sculptures into vessels for new life.

These transformations question the authority of Western artistic traditions within Southeast Asian art education, where European standards have long influenced how artistic knowledge, beauty and professional recognition are understood. Yet cultural knowledge, like language or food, does not travel unchanged. It is continually reshaped by the materials, practices and environments it encounters.

Making does not reject Western art, but questions why its inherited standards should remain authoritative in another cultural setting. If artistic knowledge can be reproduced, broken down and reconstituted, who determines which forms deserve preservation, and by whose standards should their value be judged?

Keywords: #AestheticAuthority #ArtEducation #Unlearning #CulturalTransmission #MaterialCulture #MakingAndUnmaking #InstitutionalCritique

Way Out