TOA Lighting：site-specific installation, lighting equipment sponsored from TOA Lighting. Hong Gah Museum：oil painting on canvas(194 x 260 cm) TOA Lighting project’s documents：lighting equipment, wall painting, AD. documents.

Description: “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.

Concepts related to the project:

1) Relation of Lighting to Current Exhibition Sites “Picture lamp” lighting is the standard lighting for almost all exhibitions in Taiwan. Undoubtedly, the yellow spotlight serves best for painting and sculpture in the category of plastic arts from the past, as its yellow and warm features set the standard tone for traditional and classic pieces of art. However, as plastic arts embarks on diverse paths of development, most exhibition sites in Taiwan still tend to equip all forms of exhibitions with the standard picture lamp lighting and have not adopted the fittest lighting for modern plastic arts. As a result, a gap between the lighting and certain forms of modern art may emerge. This issue of the relation of exhibition sites to their lighting is a subject the artist wishes to highlight through his project.

2) The Source and Destination of Resources in a Project During other artistic activities prior to this project, the artist turned some social resources he obtained as an artist into third-party resources. In other words, these resources have been transformed into other types of social resources through the operation of art, and specific economic positions are created at the respective ends of the resource chain.

3) Title of Exhibition and Advertising The artist chooses not to entitle the exhibition based on his own concepts. Instead, he wishes to create more derivative value through the titles. In the end, the two titles of the two exhibitions indicate the source and destination of project resources, and how important they are to the project itself. Advertisement expenses for “TOA Lighting” (first phase) at Hong-Gah Museum are paid by the Museum, while those for “Hong-Gah Museum” (second phase) at La Chambre Gallery are covered by the Gallery.

4) Production after Operation – Painting or Post-documents In the exhibition at La Chambre Gallery, viewers perceive the absence of creative images and artistic styles. What is present, instead, is a careful painting made by the artist. He does not seem to be concerned about the lacking of content, because the content and images to be portrayed and captured have long been created by him, as they are the metaphoric objects in still life. These objects are presented in compliance with the manipulation through the project. Therefore, the painting becomes a conceptual piece of art, a production document, and its chosen form inclines toward the attribute of the exhibition site, which is a commercial gallery.

At the final phase of the project, the artist chooses an unusual form of document by presenting a post-document using similar logic to the project. Taking advantage of the funds awarded by National Culture and Art Foundation, he purchases the same amount of the same lighting in exchange for the pieces already installed in Hong-Gah Museum. Theses pieces are then processed and turned into post-documents.