Between photography and sculpture, the imitation of reality.

• Main Author: Yuen, Joel Kong Chong.
• Other Authors: Shannon Lee Castleman
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Photography; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Sculpture
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/39473
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Coming to terms with my own mortality, I am faced with the proposition that suffering, pain and death comes with life. To express this notion, I have embarked on the arduous process of personally hand sculpting Italian Arabescato marble. Having created three pieces of figurative hand sculptures, all referencing my own body and anatomy, they convey my struggle in grasping the idea of imminent death. Death itself will always be a mystery, but what I can discover, is in trying to make sense of this visual and tactile world that gives us our rich memories and experiences. They include touching, seeing, learning and understanding the semiotics of each culture. Looking at these human attributes, I want to pose the fundamental question: “What is reality?” To illustrate this, I explored the art technique of trompe l'oeil (French for “trick the eye”), where I placed a photographic print of a fake shadow under each hand sculpture. By doing so, the fake shadow blends in with the real shadow of the marble hands in the installation. This visual deception becomes a metaphor for the human condition, where “truth” or “fallacy” is non-discernable.