Taiwan was well known for its manufacturing industry 20 years ago and the products produced were marked “Made in Taiwan”. Most factories, however, have moved to China. Besides, the Taiwan Government has struggled to show up on international occasions because of the political dilemma. I am hoping to obtain official grant from Taiwan Government for this project to help me produce tourist souvenirs objects of different cities, specially carve “Made in Taiwan” and the authorities, such as Council for Culture Affairs (sponsor), on these souvenirs as a logo different from those of general products. These products are to be displayed and sold at local souvenir shops. The project is nonprofit; therefore, the retailers can gain more profit by selling these products than similar souvenirs.

The shape of star has been constantly put to use on flags as a metaphor of revolutionary meaning or territorial symbols such as U.S. and Australian national flag. As for the flag of European Union, its main visual is a 12-star circle. Interestingly, none of the national flags of first EU countries bear a star. They instead convey their symbols and metaphors through vertical and horizontal color blocks. If one analyzes the national flags with stars in the world, it wouldn’t be difficult to find that they belong to relatively new countries. It’s sufficed to say that star has been applies to national flags only in more recent era. This tendency has close relationship with the evolvement of semeiology. This work attempts to examine the loss of European design tradition in the EU flag. From design perspective, the EU flag has conformed to the genericness of globalization. <Star Power> renders the stars on the EU flag in 3-D. Therefore, it generate multiple blocks. These blocks were then filled in with colors applied to the flags of EU countries.

During the 2008 Olympic Game in Beijing, I read in the news that Taiwanese audience had to bring the national flag of Myanmar in order to cheer for their national teams. When being waved, Myanmar’s flags looked similar to Taiwan’s. This piece explores how tricky design can invoke images of implications or multiple meanings. Taiwan’s national flag is the starting point for this design that looks into the adjustability of meanings in contemporary political environment. As I designed this piece, I also considered the problem of its legitimacy in the world politics and the fact that it has to be shown in international exhibits. Originally it was specially made for the 2009 Taiwan Contemporary Art Group Exhibit in Paris. In the international exhibit promoted by the Taiwanese government, I attempted to use this piece to advertise Taiwan and to present Taiwan’s political situation.

“When I was in my second grade of primary school, I had often encountered, in mid-tern exams, such questions starting with “Wo-guo (meaning our country)” in my social science class. Even though it did not seen to bother most of my classmates, I was greatly troubled by this choice of words, and could not take my mind out of it during the exam, wondering which country “Wo-guo” is referring to, since “Han-guo” means Korea, “Chung-guo” China, and “Mai-guo” the United States of America. At the time, I reckoned that I was dim-witted compared to my schoolmates the same age, since I had never heard any of them bewildered by such matter and went to our teacher for answer. I could only take this matter into my own hands trying to figure it out eavesdropping and speculating.    

Now that I’ve a grown up, looking back I realized I might not have been the only person who felt embarrassed by such misunderstanding, since, in my opinion, people who read Mandarin are not necessarily from the same country. If we start an English phrase with “In my country…”, few people would be able to tell which country “my country” is really referring to.”

The project is one of the ongoing site-specific projects of Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. It is proposed and executed by the artist after contemplating its interior space and consulting with the museum staff. During the exhibition period, two sets of tables were made, and one of them was on display. (Six tables to a set) After the exhibition, one was stored in a conference room for future use, and the other set was put on sale in a commercial space. The existence of these two sets of tables is thus able to form a certain contrast. The amount and size of these tables are based on the space of the conference room, the production budget, practicality for future use, and the museum’s characteristics. The financial sources came from exhibition budget, museum budget, and the curator and artist’s own expense. For this exhibition, the artist will present one set of tables owned by the artist and two black-and-white photos depicting the conference room before and after the tables are installed.

“TOA Lighting” is a project specially developed to be displayed in Hong-Gah Museum and La Chambre Gallery. In the project, the artist, Yu-Cheng Chou, addresses the formation and the termination of an exhibition from his own specific economic position, reflecting on both the source and destination of resources in a given environment. He considers the exhibition site at Hong-Gah Museum to be a single object, and submits a new proposal regarding the lighting equipment and contemporary plastic arts. The proposed lighting is then produced and installed through and by the artist.

For the purpose of attracting sponsorship for the lighting equipment from a private enterprise, the artist turns the title of his art into an alternative form of business advertisement by using this company’s identification symbols in exhibition-related ads. On the site of the exhibition, the lighting pieces are the only objects in place and are evenly installed. After the exhibition ends, the ownership of the lighting has been transferred to the Museum as its property.

Another phase of this exhibition starts in La Chambre Gallery two weeks after the beginning of “TOA Lighting”. Here at a commercial gallery, the artist re-presents his museum exhibition in a large-scale painting, with the title of “Hong-Gah Museum”.

Through the “transfer”, “variation”, “discrepancy” and “feedback” in this project, the artist highlights the existence of himself, the private business, the museum and the commercial gallery, along with their comparative economic positions. What is shown is that the business, the museum and the gallery have all become participants of an art project. They have, respectively, received the benefits or potential benefits disposed by the artist, while meeting needs of their own – advertising, lighting equipment and potential transactions of artistic production.

The final phase of this project is to display post-production documents. National Culture and Art Foundation has awarded special funds to this phase of the project, and the funds are used to purchase the same model of lighting to replace the ones installed in Hong-Gah Museum. Documents produced in the process, after slight artistic twists, then become the post-production documents on display.

This work contains 3 parts:

Motto: It is one of my father’s books, which was given to me when I was fifteen years old. Its content is about how to be a upright person. The work let the content reappear on a video.

Diary related to me: It collects entries about me in my mother’s diaries from my birth to the point when I was able to remember.

Story teller: The author chose several children’s stories that he listened to often when he was a child. Then, his parents told them and were recorded into 2 tracks.

Story teller

Almost everyone has listened to stories from their parents. Or people may tell their kids some stories after becoming parents themselves. This could be a familiar experience for everyone, over a certain period of time for 2~3 years, in their childhood or parenthood. People listen to story from their parents. And they will later on tell stories to their kids after becoming the parents themselves. Bed-time stories from parents might be deeply engraved in lots of people’s mind. However, some people may not be able to recall their patents’ smile, tone and love when telling stories. Therefore, the artwork will stress the importance of this family activity- bed-time story by connecting audiences’ memories in childhood. This is hoped to remind audiences of the precious moments of bed-time story.

Diary related to me

In this part, I will firstly focus on my mom’s diary. My mother is asked to pick up some important events about me that I was too young to remember. This is to provide audience with a complete history of my background and growth. My mother’s expectations on me and her cares about me can also be observed in her diary. These events from mom’s diary will be illustrated and described to audience by playing animations on screen. Picture by picture, audience can realize my personal background by watching this film. This is expected to provide audience a documentary image of my growth. There will be about 30 pieces of animation. Each piece represents a specific content from my mother’s diary. And each piece will be played for one minute.

The 64-Color Crayon is the gift that mom brought to me 25 years ago, after she came back from her trip in US. This imported 64-color crayon was very precious and could barely be affordable for families in Taiwan back to that time. This 64-Color Crayon could represent the family with good social-economical status, and it may be unaffordable for most my elementary school classmates. Their families needed to struggle to meet only their basic needs. This crayon inspired my interest on painting and became my friend for 6 or 7 years. However, this friend was eventually forgotten and locked in drawer since my last year in junior high school. This crayon was frequently used by me in the first place when I was a child. But I stopped using it after I was introduced other painting instruments. This crayon had have been my friend for a long time. The crayon from US was given to me by mom because she wanted to support my personal interest on painting. This crayon could say everything about mom’s expectations on me. It is still well kept today because of its meaning of this. My signature back to that time can still be seen clearly on the crayon box. This signature in my childhood seemed to prognosticate my current profession. Today, the crayon has witnessed my personal growth being an artist.

The project was originally expected to ask the artist himself to import the same crayons as those brought back by his mother. However, according to the search result online, the manufacturer and the brand name of these crayons were no longer available. Therefore, the project was expected to brining the Taiwanese manufacturer of wax crayons and arts organization to work together to remake the same 64-color crayons.

Upon receiving an invitation to hold an exhibition, the artist proposed to the art foundation to turn it into a project targeted the employees of the enterprise with which the foundation is affiliated with. During the process, the foundation financed the production, and the artist was in charge of providing a plan and a visual design by combining the names of the project and the enterprise and creating finished products with a new design pattern. The products then were sold to employees who worked in the enterprise building at a cost price of USD 8, and the revenue was transferred back to the foundation.

« Donation » is a piece produced to contribute to the relief and reconstruction work after a powerful Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan. The artist used government funding for artists in designing and printing a batch of posters. Interested collectors may purchase the posters at any price they are willing to give to finance the restoration of the disaster-hit areas. In the end the total funding from poster sales amounted to four times of production cost. In the process, the artist transformed government subsidy into benefits for a third-party group through art.

Following this project, there are many other projects coming along with funding structure similar to this one but run in many different ways and with different parties, such as Pema Lamo gallery in Taipei, Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, Toa Lighting Corp, Hong-gah Museum,  Moca Taipei and La Chambre Art Gallery & Society.  

This project was accomplished on the invitation from a commercial gallery. The artist engaged in cooperative efforts with a philanthropic organization to create a series of posters under the name of the exhibition and turned the exhibition space or act of selling into a relationship between the artist himself and the organization. The gallery was not commercially involved with the process. The three objects on display were: a poster, a statute and a declaration jointly made by the artist and the philanthropic organization.

Imagine a scene in an American sit-com when an artist barges into an art museum and says to the curator, “Hey! The paint you used on this wall isn’t white enough.” Then the artist takes out a can of paint and paints the color of pure white onto the wall. “See? I told you!” said the artist.

If you ask Yu-Cheng Chou what the difference between bellwort white and pure white is, he would answer with sound reasoning as to how this difference influences art museums in contemporary times, the same thing he did through “TOA Lighting”. However, when viewers recall past experiences visiting exhibitions, it seems this difference of colors did not exert such a considerable impact as the artist claims. Viewers really do not care about the causes behind the difference, whatever they may be. Viewers cannot tell whether the artist is either being too sensitive or simply too picky. Viewers wonder what this fuss is all about. It is indeed a fuss, and this has been Chou’s M.O. (or "design trick" as he prefers to call it) to mess with his viewers' thinking process.

The reason why he got you for a moment is because it seems to be some kind of pickiness: “…regarding the need for space for exhibitions in modern formative arts, bellwort white creates the unnecessary yellowish tone.” Isn’t that right? Chou always does this. He appears to be serious in explaining how the color white enforces neutrality to the space. Yet you cannot help noticing the title of this exhibition: “Rainbow Paint”. This is the well-hidden agenda behind all the fuss and also the subtext cloaked in the superficial pickiness. Being choosy makes a perfect excuse to cover up one’s true intention. As he earnestly discussed the difference of colors with the Museum, Chou inconspicuously transported Rainbow Paint into the Museum. What he succeeded in transporting is not only a commonly used color, but a brand, a business and a chain of connection. Paint, like fluorescent light, hooks, trolleys and other everyday museum objects people tend to ignore, is indispensible in making numerous exhibitions possible. It never comes to our mind that they, respectively, belong to a complete supply chain composed of manufacturers, factories, product orders and distribution channels. Together with an art museum/gallery, the objects constitute a giant art industry. From Chou’s perspective, all of the above are approaches through which we interpret the “art ecology” and unveil how resources flow in the art industry. He implies that as we discuss the aesthetic difference posed by bellwort white and pure white, we tacitly acknowledge the operation of resources.

Such a creative path in the palindrome manner demonstrates the rules of survival for an artist in a system. Artists always acquire a variety of resources on all sorts of conditions, and generate through creativity a lovely result with mutual benefits. This operation in a way signifies a micro-template of the global systemization of art. Chou chose the simplest and straightest approach to display that reality by making concrete the structure of artistic resources in a most concise way. He locates himself at the core, though as virtual as it is, and re-plans the direction of the flow of resources. As a matter of fact, Chou’s most pungent doing is to use the brand Rainbow Paint in promotional materials and even to name his exhibition after the paint manufacturer, making neo-liberalists in the art circles its subjects.

“Flowers for Opening”, a project aiming to highlight that besides the traditional dignified relationship between an artist and a museum, there exists an embedded ecology chain. Chou invited quite a few prominent art institutes to send flowers to the exhibition to celebrate its opening. While the flowers are displayed on-site to present the viewers a list of exhibition sponsors, they show us Chou’s thoughts in regard to responding to a network of resources. For a long time, Chou has tried to transform the solid concept of an “art museum” or “sponsor” into a fluid form. An existence which seems so appropriately located in a museum may well be a result of the connection and transportation of several resources, tracing how the structure of the art industry accumulates and forms. Since his 2009 joint efforts with Pema Lamo Gallery, Chou has personally simulated this process of accumulation for multiple times.