ChengOu Yu
(he/him/his)
Charlotte, NC
Biography
Originally from China. ChengOu Yu received his BA in Ceramic Design from Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute (China) in 2012 and his Advanced Diploma with honor in Crafts and Design - Ceramics from Sheridan College (Canada) in 2015. In 2020, he graduated from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University with an MFA in ceramic art. He is currently a Lecturer and 3D Technician in Ceramics at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Yu has exhibited his work at numerous venues in the United States, Canada, and Asia and has work in public collections including the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY; Liling Ceramic Valley Museum, Hunan, China; and Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, Jingdezhen, China His trans-national experience impacts his roles as an artist. His attention in assumptions and representations between cultures reflected on the works. His interest in pottery form points to interest in iconography in general. Through the construction of iconic objects, he exams how the encounter of things under different circumstances changes our understanding and how does culture differences, life experience, becomes part of the cognitive process.
Artist Statement
The traditional pottery form has a significant influence on my studio practice. I investigate the notions of perspective and distortion through my sculptural work. My work is the reflection of my experiences living and traveling in different countries and cultures, while the interpretation of the tradition in my culture continuously shifts. I translate into form these moments into spaces, as I imagine how they have been processing in my mind. I think about movement, how a thing moves in space and the kind of gesture or form it creates, capturing the trajectory of it. This action is a self-reflection of my own life experience. The imagery is distorted, blurred, even transformed, but the root remains clear. Working with clay allows my mind to flow between those imaginations while my hand is engaging with the material. I arrange the objects in a specific manner in space to evoke the same feeling that I had when I am making the pieces. Shaping the material and the concept, I create work that describes my feeling of time and space, the movement of the my reality, the trajectory sometimes hidden.
