TRANSFORMATION AND AUTONOMY are notions explored, through the medium of marble, by Australian artist Alex Seton in his Singapore debut exhibition The Pygmalion, which opens at Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore 27 Oct.
In Roman mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved. The Pygmalion e ect is the phenomenon in which higher expecta-tions lead to an increase in performance. Its inverse is the Golem e ect, by which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. Both e ects are forms of a self-fulfilling prophecy, at play in a world dictated by the privilege of circumstance.
The Pygmalion will see Seton using antique and modern Bentwood chairs, along with his favoured medium of marble, to replace components with carved marble objects and digitally printed plastic proxies, creating a series of hybrid objects that morph the mass-produced with the hand made. The prostheses will simultaneously repair and corrupt their original forms and function, illuminating a poetic narrative of expectation and transformation.
