By Mary Voelz Chandler
March 7 2008

His installation is tucked away in the New Media Gallery, signaled by two monitors showing the almost vibrating black-and-white video Emotions. It’s an entree to a mix of digital prints and looped videos that signals the U.S. museum debut for Yu-Cheng Chou, who was born in Taiwan but is based in Paris.

Both those facts really stand out. The floating quality of the wall-hung Jamerendu - a dreamy travelogue populated by fashion photography and indeterminate objects - will lure you in for more than one viewing. The three small TVs, showing shifting black and white faces (Portrait VII), will keep you guessing as to how each feature or attribute will change and morph.

But Yu-Cheng Chou’s standout work is Similarity II, a floor-based video in which the artist has turned some sections of a Han dynasty hand scroll into shimmering surfaces. It is old and new, art and artifice, and hypnotic beyond belief.

Above: Yu-Cheng Chou’s three-minute 2007 Similarity II, permanent video on monitor, derived from a handscroll painting.