TUJ Art Misanthrope City
Tokyo is that city that gives out dreams and destroys dreams. Even on the brightest of days, there are still fragments of loneliness and fakeness you can easily spot everywhere in the city. Every fake laugh, fake kindness, and fake emotion; all used by us to cover our loneliness.
Capturing people’s emotions is interesting, but after a while of doing so, I started to move towards another path and tried to show those emotions I got from the people and mapping in the shots of the city.
城市的殞落 (Societal Collapse)
120 x 180 mm
The motive: An afternoon cycling in kudanshita, and saw this building standing out by itself, which resonate with the lonely part of me.
I was cycling around Kudanshita, in an effort to clear my head. Sticking out from the organized chaos of this city, this building deeply resonated with the loneliness inside of me. The fact that this building looks so organized and sterile, surrounded by signs of life below but just high enough to be removed from society. Its rigidity makes it look strong, but take the people out of the building, it becomes hollow, ready to collapse.
驚恐 ( Paranoid)
155 X 103 mm
While taking the shot, the man was looking at a car pass by. His facial expression reminded me of how pedestrians in Tokyo always give a cold look when they pass you at a crosswalk. This look is so intrinsically Tokyo, to any plain tourist or visitor, it is just a look. But I’ve gone slightly mad seeing this expression so often when passing people by. The subtle judgment really pounds me into conformity.
無題 (Untitled)
140 X 210 mm
日常 (Daily life)
147 X 158 mm
The shot was taken outside of a Starbucks. Daily life is always something that attracts me. I’m always wondering what others’ daily life looks like, so I got into street photography. It is a charming window into the normal humdrum of the well-oiled workforce of Tokyo.
現代人日常(Contemporary Life)
Nowadays people always use their phones, and never lift their heads up. When I saw this, it just made me feel cold. The environment is so clean and organized. The empty seat beside the man is neatly placed, expecting a company to bid farewell without any interaction between the two parties. And the man would never know if the company came or not, for the phone is his sole focus.
BioGraphy
Born in 1996, Taiwanese national Jason Shuo Chun Ou is studying at Temple University as an Art major. Although Jason dabbles in visual arts, he is a true collector at heart. From a young age, Jason has been collecting toys, figures, limited-edition prints, and paintings. But not only does Jason curate such items for his personal collection, but he is also a painter and photographer. In pieces created by Jason Shuo Chun Ou, often free-form self-expression can be seen through sporadic paint drippings and ripples, or surreal paintings of simple dotted faces. Most pieces have the purpose of being ambiguous interpretations of emotions but mainly focus on feelings of loneliness, melancholy, and rumination. The same can be said about his photography, it still follows the line of loneliness, more apparent through the use of black and white photography, and captured scenes of raw emotion or empty spaces.