OIL PAINTING SERIES

Since Chou’s art practice has taken on ideas of making art through an investigation of material processes and the formation of meaning and identity, he had begun considering the relationship between his work and the history of painterly art, but inflected through questions about how the meaning of the object or image works contextually and symbolically. More recently, he has been exploring a process of image making that plays with a complex set of internal/external spatial relations.

Having investigated the relationship between artists and art materials throughout history, Chou has tried to push the boundary of painting and practiced painting in his own ways. This Oil Painting never dry, nor does it sit on a canvas. The space within a clear perspex frame is filled by recycle engine oil. This contextually relevant material is preserved as a monumental painterly art, and represents time and space through reflective surface.

The works of Chou’s Oil Painting series seals the oil into perspex vessel. Chou described he has considered those works as specimen of this oil-made generation. Presuming the meaning and identity of his oil-made works will transit from contemporary artworks to be historical objects, since the oil are depleted in our world. There is another layer of meaning giving to the future audiences to understand the times by the artist.

“ I’m not trying to imitate an oil painting, I’m trying to make one. And if I disregard the assumption that painting is layers of pigments applied to a surface, then I am practicing painting by other means.” — Chou Shih Hsiung