Chou Yu-Cheng 周育正
The below essay was included in Chou Yu-Cheng: Selected Works 1999 - 2025, a monograph by Chou Yu-Cheng.
In 2013, I set up an independent publishing studio to focus on artists’ books as an alternative practice parallel to my curatorial projects. Chou Yu-Cheng was the first artist I visited at that time, in the hope of a collaboration. I remember the day we met at his newly rented Taipei studio—a patchy old house yet to be renovated, with traces of clay on the exposed-brick walls. I cannot remember much of the conversation we had during what turned out to be our only meeting about a book; however, I recall the thrill of embarking on a new journey. Not long after that studio visit, I moved to Hong Kong and put the publishing project on hold. Chou never mentioned it again. It was not until ten years later that we resumed the unfinished work.
In an effort to offer a comprehensive perspective on his artistic trajectory over twenty-five years, this long-overdue book has been transformed from an artist’s publication into a monograph, reproducing a significant portion of Chou’s body of work, from his student days to the present. Born in 1976, Chou is one of Taiwan’s most prolific midcareer artists, and he has participated in numerous international exhibitions. We first met on the occasion of “ThaiTai: A Measure of Understanding,” a 2012 exhibition in Bangkok organized by Open-Contemporary Art Center, a nonprofit in Taipei.1 I was involved in producing public programs alongside the exhibition. Originating from conversations between Taiwanese and Thai artists who met at a residency program in New York, “ThaiTai” was an artistic exchange between the two countries. At the exhibition, Chou presented TEMCO (p.70), a large-scale painting that came with a contract. The contract stipulated that TEMCO, a Thai paint manufacturer, agreed to the artist’s request to sponsor free paint for the exhibition space at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre for a year, in exchange for a large advertisement in two consecutive issues of a renowned Thai art magazine. The advertisement featured the company’s logo as a key visual element, thereby maximizing the campaign’s impact. Working on-site in Bangkok with TEMCO products, Chou made a grid painting inspired by a tote bag adorned with traditional Thai patterns that the Thai duo Jiandyin had given him and the other visiting Taiwanese artists. The seemingly subtle work, in a mode for which Chou had become known, demonstrates how cultural exchanges that are extended through friendship can further reflect back, or intensify, the institutional norms of reciprocity between local businesses and art organizations.
Chou’s contribution to “ThaiTai” also represents a continuation of a series of well-known pieces he realized since 2010, including TOA Lighting (p.50), Rainbow Paint (p.60), Opening Flowers (p.56), Meeting Table of MoCA, Taipei (p.66), that take the allocation and management of resources within art institutions as a starting point. Another shared quality of these works is that there are almost no traces of the artist’s handson presence. LED tubes, paints, flowers, or conference tables: Chou places these readymade objects in the gallery through careful negotiation. This sensitivity to scenography became Chou’s trademark, and from a series of exhibitions we see an artist who has relegated his role as a creator to the background, highlighting instead his role as a tactful mediator in the art system.
One can see in Chou’s works from this period the influence of artists who were engaged in critiquing institutions in Europe and the United States in the 1970s, such as Marcel Broodthaers, Michael Asher, and Andrea Fraser, among others. “Their rigorously sitespecific interventions developed as a means not only to reflect on these and other institutional conditions but also to resist the very forms of appropriation on which they reflect,” Fraser writes, summarizing the Western art of this era. “As transitory, these works further acknowledge the historical specificity of any critical intervention, whose effectiveness will always be limited to a particular time and place.”2 In Chou’s work, the notion of critique comes from a reflection on his artistic upbringing.
After graduating from high school, he entered the Department of Fine Arts of the National Taiwan University of Arts. At that time, art education in Taiwan was quite conservative. Not content with using only the paintbrush, Chou began to play with different media. Plaster and Toilet Paper (p.42), which he created in 1999 while still in school, is an early expression of his interest in different materials and spatial properties. Chou discovered that the large plaster casts of figurative sculptures used for sketching practice in class were stored in a corner next to a toilet. He filled the gaps between the pedestals on which the plaster casts were displayed with a large number of toilet paper sheets stacked one on top of another. Seen from a distance, the wrinkles on the mounds of toilet paper resembled the carved folds representing clothes on the plaster statues. This visual error produced an unexpected effect on two totally different materials, making this corner filled with readymade objects a puzzling scene on campus.
The playful idea that underpins this early work has become an important starting point to understand Chou’s thinking about art. During his student years, he had to be strategic about choosing the right space for his art and about deciding the most costeffective way to spend his money due to resource constraints. This careful consideration became a foundational part of Chou’s creative process in the years to come. For TOA Lighting, Rainbow Paint, and Opening Flowers, Chou might have started by asking basic questions: How can we use a different kind of lighting for the exhibition? How can the paint on the walls be whiter? Do we need congratulatory flower baskets for the opening? These very chūnibyō 3 thoughts, when applied to the production of art, become the catalyst for institutional critique. With a characteristic economy of means, Chou enacted creative modes of negotiation between art institu- tions, sponsors, and artists. In a series of influential texts on institutional critique, Hans Haacke described the role of the artist in the process of institutionalizing art: “‘Artists’ as much their supporters and their enemies, no matter of what ideological coloration, are unwitting partners,” Haacke wrote in 1974 of the intertwined relationship of artists and institutions. “They participate jointly in the maintenance and/or development of the ideological make-up of their society. They work within that frame, set the frame and are being framed.”4 Since his material living and creative work are closely related to institutions, Chou knows very well that he must interrogate those institutions from within. Therefore, no matter how the form of his works changes as he adopts new mediums, the core issue for him is always to solve problems that are at once his own and within the institutional framework.
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After graduating from the National Taiwan University of Arts, Chou, like many Taiwanese artists at the time, chose to go abroad for further education. He entered the fourth year of the fine art program at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with honors. Instead of continuing to study painting and sculpture, in which he excelled, he chose the new media art studio, a field that was totally new to him. As many of his peers had a high level of familiarity with digital media, Chou knew that he had to work harder to figure out how to use digital tools while finding his own voice. His solid art training in Taiwan became his unique weapon, enabling him to develop an artistic form that integrated moving image with physical, three-dimensional elements. The outcome was a series of object-based, non-narrative video works that employ visual effects similar to those used in TV commercials to manipulate consumers’ perception of products. Chou was interested in using technology, especially commercial post-production software, to appropriate the visual language and symbols of mass media while experimenting with various ways of presenting video work in the exhibition space.
Even when confronted with potentially sensitive issues of national identity, Chou chose to subtly transform heavy historical entanglements into formalized design language through abstract symbols. In 1999, Chou parti- cipated in an exhibition of documents of Taiwanese contemporary art, “Taiwan Calling,” (p.38) co-organized by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Centre Culturel de Taiwan à Paris; Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Due to Taiwan’s long-standing diplomatic constraints, the organizers decided that it was impossible to incorporate the Taiwan flag into the exhibition’s main visual design. As a response, Chou broke down the design of the Taiwan flag into various graphic elements that he affixed to the large glass ceiling of the Műcsarnok Kunsthalle. The deconstructed patterns, in red, white, and blue, formed a new, repetitive image. While acknowledging the cultural and diplomatic repression Taiwan has endured over the years, Chou playfully adapted serious political symbols and integrated them into everyday scenes. The gesture recalls Daniel Buren’s use of abstract symbols, colors, and spatial interventions to defamiliarize public spaces. Taiwanese curator Hsu Jian-Yu commented in his review of the Műcsarnok exhibition: “Politics is a complicated issue that could also be light and simple. Only when you are in a foreign place, will you be granted the space to truly examine in detail the relationship between your art and your country. Your identity becomes a kind of truth that you have to find another way to adhere to, and this kind of truth is also the source of the humor in Chou Yu-Cheng’s works.” 5
After returning to Taiwan in 2010, Chou held several high-profile exhi- bitions. He received numerous invitations for shows and, in 2014, presented solo exhibitions in two major cities in Taiwan, at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. As his art attracted increased attention, Chou benefitted from Taiwan’s long-established subsidy system. The Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a variety of local government agencies, provide annual subsidies of varying amounts to art and cultural practitioners. Since its establishment in 1996, the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF), under the Ministry of Culture, has distributed an average of NT$200 million in grants each year. The government is committed to fostering an environment that is conducive to art and culture, but there is a fundamental problem: Artists are required to submit bureaucratic paperwork and cope with cumbersome administrative tasks in order to apply for grants, and this procedure often ignoresthe signi- ficance of the artists’ role as creators. Chou, like many artistin Taiwan, had to apply for grants and fight for exhibition opportunities.
As a response to the situation, he embedded the existential pressure and anxiety he felt into several of his projects. Works including A Working History—Lu Chieh-Te (p.212), A Man of the Showa Era (p.208) and exhibitions such as “Molyneux” (p.220) and “Liszt” (p.200) are exemplary of this period and embody a semi-autobiographical strain in Chou’s art. Positioning third-party characters in the role of protagonist, Chou reflected on his upbringing and personal development as an artist via surrogates. Lu Chieh-Te, for example, is a real middle-aged person whose precarious career as a temporary worker was at risk due to the economic reform that took place in Taiwan. The typesetter Wu Chao-Nan, featured in A Man of the Showa Era, worked in a printing factory, just like Chou’s father. And Geoff Molyneux, whose work inspired “Molyneux,” was also engaged in art but lived in a different time and cultural background from Chou. In “Liszt,” the Romantic composer’s presence was reduced to but a name, serving only to delineate the professional identities of Chou’s parents. Curator Esther Lu made her comments on “Liszt”: “This form of spatial narrative quite straightforwardly depicted in symbolic scenes the past and present of Chou’s life and artistic journey, projecting some kind of image (or multiple images) of the artist himself, or a future that he privately anticipated or feared.”6
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Chou is a quiet, unhurried, and meticulous person. Without talking much, he spends a lot of time conversing with himself to slowly elucidate his thoughts. He often jokes that he is a control freak who needs frameworks and planning; these requirements are fairly clearly reflected in his work. His creations have always been founded upon the state of existence he faces at a given moment, focusing on what could be considered trivial matters. As an art school student, he was preoccupied with how to improve the conditions of the space in which he would show his work, achieving his goal by exchanging and distributing resources; after returning to Taiwan, he was faced with immediate financial pressure and family responsibilities, which inspired him to use other people’s life stories as his subject matter to express his personal sentiments. After receiving several government subsidies, Chou realized that this was not a sustainable solution and devised a plan to modify his production methods, progressively decreasing his dependence on the subsidies. In 2015 he was selected for the Künstlerhaus Bethanien residency in Berlin, where he began the series “Chemical Gilding, Keep Calm, Galvanise, Pray, Gradient, Ashes, Manifestation, Unequal, Dissatisfaction, Capitalise, Incense Burner, Survival, Agitation, Hit, Daylight.” (p.110)—an important turning point in his artistic career. The series shows his attempt to change, to return to the familiar training of painting and to organize his everyday artistic practice through colors, subjects, and other elements that symbolize the art of painting. It appears that he has adopted a nuanced abstract language, but in fact he is more will to reveal his own emotions while further homing in on the limitations and politics of the medium.
When the momentum of production halted with the start of the pandemic in 2020, there was a lot more time for reflection. The suspension of exhibition schedules was a relief to Chou, who was on the verge of a crisis. It also prompted him to face up to the fatigue and weariness brought about by his prolific way of working in the past. The catastrophic global event became another important turning point, which led to the development of an ongoing series of abstract paintings. Painting can be a highly personal medium, making completely transparent the artist’s choice of color configura- tion, use of pigments and other details, and traces of handwork. This is a remarkable change for Chou, who once hid himself behind negotiation, and it is also closer to the trajectory of his life. Now he no longer needs to deliberately design a story he wants to tell, an experiment he wants to try, or invite a third party as an introductory figure. He has found a gesture that suits the pace and speed of the current life stage, and he is able to speak freely. This change may have come from a more thorough understanding of the art institution. Fraser’s 2005 Artforum article on the the institutionalization of critique seems to aptly capture the core of Chou’s creative thinking. She argues that it is “not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to. Because the institution of art is internalized, embodied, and performed by individuals, these are the questions that institutional critique demands we ask, above all, of ourselves.” 7
1 Open-Contemporary Art Center (OCAC) is an artist-run space founded in Banciao, Taiwan, in 2001. Chou was a member of the art center at the time.
2 Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum, September 2005: 281.
3 Chūnibyō is a Japanese term used to describe a transient mental state that can occur during puberty.
4 Hans Haacke, “All the ‘Art’ That’s Fit to Show,” in Museums by Artists, ed. A.A. Bronson and Peggy Gale, Toronto: Metropole, 1983, p. 152.
5 徐建宇，「關於藝術的描述」，《(無)關於藝術或李斯特與____ /》，2015，p.53。
6 呂岱如，「關於『形象』的幾重當代美學思考:從周育正的『李斯特』計畫談起」， 《藝術認證》，2014。
7 Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum, September 2005: 281.