Circa to the epilogue of the first week practicing after the Christmas holiday, there are profusion of projects in the way of processing. The casting workshop project, as the idea has just been initiated this week, to cast those found material encompassing crab shell, oyster shell protracted to other food stuffs. The manipulation of the waxing, as I have already been proficient to melt pots of wax ensued with the pouring into the model. Alongside to this time of casting, imputed to the practical circumstances of the shell particularly the crab one, pertains a precipitous undercut for the wax modelling at beginning, while it was not a nemesis for me within my option to allocate the Alginate for the model making endowed by its superb dexterity amenable with the undercut condition. As what I organized later to analogize the attribute of the trio between silicone, Alginate and plaster model, though both Alginate and Silicone garner the competence of flexibility for the intricate objects, the alginate, prevails with the shortage of either fleeting speed of solidification from the liquid form, or the transient and delimited times for the casting because of the high temperature of the liquid wax as every pouring is the subtraction of Alginate’s longevity to be serviceable.
Therefore, I have to trot for a means to the end, manipulating incessantly with the preoccupation to preserve the condition of the Alginate model at mean time, which unsettles me from time to time, by the placement of the model in the sink for the moisture remaining inwardly and other manners to preserve model for more using times. Alongside the making progression, there are memories redolent in my mind about material of casting correlated to the food stuff, for paradigm sugar. I always conceive within the scene of the melting of the sugar, aligning with the material principle of the wax, the melting toward its later congealing into solid. Thus, the contemplation to cast the Alginate model with the sugar accordance to its liquidity, as contributed for such practice, I also research online with few videos watching associated with the caramelized sugar making and later means to operate.
Whereas, my risk-taking audacity, verve and zeal incite me today to make direct experiment on it by borrowing my friend’s kitchen, carrying both the models of oyster and crab to make trial of sugar melting. The process of melting expends quite long time and did not being auspicious as its outset which the sugar never engendered any cue of melting because of my overdoing to pour water into the pot. The melting point of the sugar is verge on 186 degrees, outrunning the highest point water able to reach (100 degrees), which trigger the first fallout. All the things were in my thrall afterward, albeit of the seething condition of the sugar liquid in the end, somehow dying the sugar into the deep sepia like being scorched, bubbling in a savage manner at mean time, ensued by the pouring into the Alginate model meticulously then.Admittedly, it is quite precipitous and curt impulse to make test of such juxtaposed with my sparse knowledge of cooking in the past, derisory to some extent for such convulsive experiment, interdisciplinary toward the cooking field as the pivotal part of the research for such art making. The reason and concept this casting verve toward the sugar not only mused by my childhood memory to eat and behold some local cuisines’ making process by melting sugar, but also the reverberation of the original usage of the crab and oyster, lauded by its luscious edibility rather than the investigation of their own beings. Likewise, my concern of this project also pinpointed to a counter-mimicking of the mere context shift from somewhere else quotidian to the gallery space for the questioning of art aspects and the like, which is quite formulaic for me because of its multiple practices taking places by contemporary artists. As this project, the casting those objects could sublimate them which are re-oriented toward other context of sculpture within art value from its use value, akin to Jeff Koon’s Placement of vacuum hoovers in the Perspex box within the gallery space to challenge its axiom or more antecedents like Duchamp’s ready-made’s usage. Comparison and otherness from them, I engender the new context and content for the crab, oyster and others as the first step by the wax casting, toward the casting by sugar which is able to clench its original usage of edibility back by such upcycling manipulation, ensued that anticipated performance to eat the sculpture made of sugar in my initiative for the project as a concept to conglomerate those crab shell, oyster and the like with my body by this partaking propensity, the vanishing of my art work at same time, literally decimating the permanence of the sculptural concept by such, toward the quiddity of the crab shell and oyster per se as the casting action into statue never stagnated the real sense of the evanescence of the life.
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