It’s interesting to watch people who come to visit the SUPERFROG Gallery to experience Yu-Cheng Chou’s work. As they slowly make their way through the show, the sounds of shoes scraping the floor harmoniously mix with the ambient soundtrack that accompanies Chou’s video, Jamerendu. However, the sounds of shuffling always seem to come to stop at Paperwork I, as viewers stand before the piece, cross their arms and mumble questions like,

“Is it a painting?” or “How did he make this?”

I have noticed that the technique behind Yu-Cheng Chou’s artwork, especially in his digital pieces, is what grabs his viewer’s attention. Mounted against plexiglass, his digital photography transcends two-dimensionality and poses many questions to the viewer regarding consumerism, materialism, and the way in which the media influences our lives.

Yu-Cheng Chou’s approach to digital photography is unlike any other artist and is something I find very unique and inspiring. Often in digital photography, an artist is physically detached from his subject. However, I respect how Chou immerses himself completely into his subject and does not let his camera divide the connection between himself and his work. In Paperwork I, he appropriates an image from mass media and physically manipulates it, so as to retain his physical presence in the digital piece. He touches his subject — a Prada advertisement — with his own hands. With every twist and crumple, he creates a three-dimensional landscape within the photograph, showing the valleys and mountains that make up the consumerist landscape we are subjected to daily. The digital image and the meaning behind his artwork truly evolves through this technique and his choice of medium. Yu-Cheng Chou challenges the way we look at art, inspiring his viewer to ask questions and to connect with his artwork on a personal level.

Today marks the end of the first week of our Yu-Cheng Chou exhibition.

Yu-Cheng Chou’s pieces have been resonating deeply with many of our attendees, myself included.  There is a high degree of sentimentality to his work that I seldom present in art today.   His works blend the digital techniques of today but also hark back to his youth.  His works purity and sentimentality transport us back to our own childhoods and help us to remember what  was dear to us in our early years.   His larger works, which use many of the digital tools available today, are mounted underneath glass are images from our current time and shows us what we hold dear, not in the past but this present moment.  Are these images invoking us in some way?  Are they a biting reference our materialistic nature?  Our consumerism?  Life style and brand obsession?  Regardless of the intent, Yu-Cheng Chou’s works are sure to hit a chord in us all.