Cover photo: Overlooking the Fleeting Moment, 2025 Hung high upon a wall, this leather sculpture of a swollen, middle-aged body gazes downward. He is not an active observer, but a suspended witness— placed at a height where other people’s lives rush past beneath him in fleeting moments. This is not a sculpture about movement, but about immobility—a state of being where the body no longer seeks, struggles, or expects. It watches, endures, and lingers—just long enough to miss the moment as it passes.
“I’M A FAT, middle-aged man. I’m unattractive. My life is full of pain.”
Artist and teacher Teoh Shaw Gie (赵 少杰) declared these maxims about himself while grinning from ear to ear. In his solo exhibition, Archaeology of Midlife (中年考古 學), which was hosted at O Sculpture Studio from 21 June to 27 July 2025, Teoh explored the pains and insecurities of his midlife with a beer-bellied sense of self-deprecating humour.
The exhibition was composed of a variety of leather sculptures depicting the naked human form, which Teoh describes as intimate self-portraits of his soul. Despite blatantly rendering the male genitalia in each of his sculptures, the exhibition felt neither provocative nor erotic, but reflective. From loneliness to struggles with physical health, the pieces collated at O Sculpture represented a holistic view of the daily difficulties of living as a middle-aged man.
“People ask if I’m having a midlife crisis,” Teoh admitted openly. “But it’s not a crisis. I’m just being true to myself, like looking into midlife mirrors.”
