Plastic Age

Oil on Canvas, 2009 to 2010 / 2022 (Digitally Remastered NFT, edition: 1/1)
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Using traditional oil paint, canvas, and brush, Yeh manually painted repetitive imageries in the same indifferent and faithful manner how you would “cut and paste” pixels on a computer. It was Yeh’s process of trying to resolve the conflicts between his fascination with new media and his classic training as a painter since 8 years old. While the medium is traditional, the aesthetics embedded in these paintings are digital. This was the a starting point of a new phase in Yeh’s career in which he became more receptive to consider all creative possibilities..

The Plastic Age series has been exhibited internationally including showings in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea. It is a painting series that challenges the concept of identity and self-worth in the age of digital media. 

Plastic Age series installation shot at Art Center at Central University, Taiwan

Plastic Age—An Introduction by Susan V. Jacobson, Professor of art at University of Pennsylvania

In the Plastic Age series, C. J. Yeh began to incorporate large scale figures drawn a clearly western European influence and juxtaposed them with delicate decorative motifs from the Chinese Buddhism culture. What is most striking in this series of work is the intricacy of play between conflicting images. Mr. Yeh has not settled for using this as a simple post-modern device, but has explored the underside of such devices (such as juxtaposed imagery) to move far beyond clever rhetoric. Rather than slick and fatuous, his work is raw, exposed and extremely vulnerable as if he uses it to probe his own condition. His is able to maintain a highly tuned and delicately balanced position vis-à-vis self-revelation. He strips away dignity as a costume and reveals (rather than exposes) a very painful human condition, one that proffers a redefinition of dignity as honest and unflinching vision turned toward one’s self.

Eternity / Oil on Canvas / 178 CM (h) x 163 CM (w) / Digital Remastered for NFT in 2022

This is done without sacrificing Mr. Yeh’s love of sheer beauty, in fact, this takes on a poignancy in the context of his latter work. It is used as a standard and measure for personal worth, one which clearly can never be fully achieved. Painting as an approximate now occupies Mr. Yeh. It no longer substitutes for, or toys with, actuality and illusion but takes us to their boundaries so that we can escape the confines and assumptions of both. His work offers a challenging entry into the nether world of internal life and lures us away from the exits. It is seductive and compelling because its dramatic charge is housed in fragile, but plain poetic language.

The Curious Case of a Misfit / Oil on Canvas / 178 CM (h) x 163 CM (w) / Digital Remastered for NFT in 2022

Exit #4 / Oil on Canvas / 137 CM (h) x 91 CM (w) / Digital Remastered for NFT in 2022