ReSET - a Collection of New Media Artworks by C. J. Yeh

Since 1998, I have been exploring new media and, over time, integrating it into my more traditional areas of study and expression. The multiple results of the juxtaposition and integration of digital and analog, virtual and actual, and natural and cultural all articulate my point of view on the changing perceptions of identity and reality in the digital era. This catalog holds a sampling of my writing on my art, highlighting eleven artworks that will be on view in several venues in...
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Since 1998, I have been exploring new media and, over time, integrating it into my more traditional areas of study and expression. The multiple results of the juxtaposition and integration of digital and analog, virtual and actual, and natural and cultural all articulate my point of view on the changing perceptions of identity and reality in the digital era. This catalog holds a sampling of my writing on my art, highlighting eleven artworks that will be on view in several venues in Taiwan between November 2012 and January 2013. Pre-Purpose, Re-Purpose, De-Purpose, at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art, is my first solo exhibition in a major museum. The core concept of the exhibition is the creation of a participatory and experiential diary based on the past twenty years of my life. The theme, Pre-Purpose, Re-Purpose, De-Purpose, was chosen as a way for me to further reflect upon and share what I have experienced and learned since coming to America and then bring it back to my native land, Taiwan. It is also, in a sense, my statement of the conclusion of the first phase of my artistic career. Akin to the spirit of the Pre-Purpose, Re-Purpose, De-Purpose exhibition, this catalog serves as a brief written guide to my works, which attempt to probe and expose my life, my career, and my concerns with as honest and clear-eyed a vision as I can give them. It includes artworks from three different series: CJ Was Here, a series of mixed media art; De-Purpose, a series of large-scale interactive installations; and Equals, a series of net art (artworks using the Internet as its primary medium or platform). I would like to believe that this exhibition and this catalog were conceived with the same kind of heartfelt determination as stated by French realism master, Gustave Courbet, when describing his famous painting, The Artist’s Studio – A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted.” C. J. Yeh