I have been China for days within the confined purview of the quarantine. The last place I cherish is the Casting workshop, the last project in that workbench, being the casting of a shoe. This shoe, as the remnant from the SIP WORK NUMBER 24 the shoes screaming project, as inspired by Richard Whiteread’s casting sculpture of those building wreckages with concrete, I conceive to outpour and reveal the space inward the shoe as well as a king of re-enactment to generate eclectic meanings. The shoe, emerges quite grubby to some extent, recycled from the shoe charity aforementioned in former blog. I directly outpour the plaster to assay the effect firstly, seemingly negligible as there is no bearing toward the transformation by such curt outpouring, still spotted as usual.
Admittedly, it could be an improvising act to imbricate the whole shoe with the plaster in the end, with another tier of brushing wax and plaster superimposed. The brushing of the liquefied wax on the first layer of plaster could be an experimental manipulation, competent to intermingle the materiality of both wax and the plaster, as the wax tier, has been morphed accordance with the underlying texture of the plaster, alongside with the final layer of plaster encasing on the wax, conspicuously assimilating the textural condition of both materials. The palpable casting of the shoe is privileged not only by auspicious concern to valorize it in a defunct object in artistry and disclosure of the internal space to bind with outside by the permeating of the materials from the inside, but also the subversion of the axiom of the shoe.
The shoe, when I ruminate its originary being and stance in the world, it prevails within an identity to be an agency, mediating the situation of our bare soles and the precipitous ground. Whereas, this might not be reconciliatory to some extent as frankly, we have already waived the earth itself by this object in a manufactured circumstance. Notwithstanding, I never conceive to return to that atavistic state to appreciate that transitive style with the earth in this technological epoch, which could be the reason as I rather use plaster and wax to cast rather than the earth itself. The wax and plaster embodied into an organic state which also represent the earth yet being dubious to it within their contrivance quality indeed. The shoe, signifies the human trace and presence, abridging to the nature state anymore.
Therefore, the encrusting of the shoe by the plaster and the wax not only physically transforms the shoe into such hefty quality comparison to its initial state, but also evinced the irreversibility of the current world making the ‘objectification’, mentioned by Heidegger. It is a Worldly Image as everything pertains to the representative bulk by the human contrivance, to unremittingly objectify the world correlated with our preference. The shoe, akin to the project I did for the wood print workshop commission, as I berate the icon in the existence of the coaster, not mediating the glass and the wooden table but a chasm, is rather enact itself in this case, its sculptural shape rendered by the usage of the plaster and wax as the riddance of the originally commercial, labelled, deflected elements toward its own being.
Within the handmade quality at same time exposed by its superficial texture render a uniqueness from the manufactured condition, it is able to be the entity without the human implication anymore in this shoe. I would make my pen aligned with the shoe as well, as I have already hoarded profusion of pen hulls, hollow inside, presumably being a waste after the fleeting consumption of the wick inwardly, anticipating to outpour the plaster inside as well to produce new means.
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