Atsushi Fukui and Hideaki Kawashima belong to the generation of Japanese artists following Yoshitomo Nara, whose paintings liberated Japan’s contemporary scene from Eurocentric styles and provided a renewed recognition of childhood sensibility — one that is revealed in their joint exhibit Convolvulus. Kawashima updates the Japanese tradition of bijinga (pictures of beautiful women) but with a manga-infused style all his own that infantalizes the women he depicts. Large almond-shaped eyes that glare at the viewer with a distant yet confrontational expression are set amid a ghost-white face with barely apparent eyebrows and nostrils above thick lips. By contrast, Fukui’s landscapes possess as much life as Kawashima’s women seem to lack. Fukui’s daydream-like paintings are influenced by his love of psychedelic culture and science fiction. Subjects include planets, animals and forests that refract light in a meditative and colorful glow.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 8pm. Tel: (02) 2577-5601
■ From Saturday until Nov. 22
Taiwan-born, New York-based artist Vivian Tsao (曹志漪) employs various approaches to light and space and a palette of middle tones in a series of realistic paintings in her solo exhibit on the fourth floor of the National Museum of History. The show also features pastel drawings and manuscripts by the prolific artist.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2361-0270. Admission: NT$30
■ From Friday until Nov. 1
Illusional Distance (虛擬的距離) displays 17 oil paintings by Chinese artist Jiang Zhongli (姜中立). Jiang’s figurative works endow ordinary people with heroic qualities drawn from classical sculpture. Employing an impasto style, the artist builds up his characters using rich earth tones that he then highlights with whites and yellows to create canvases that exist somewhere between the present and the past.
■ Elsa Art Gallery (雲清藝術中心), 3F, 1-1 Tianmu E Rd, Taipei City (台北市天母東路1-1號3樓). Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2876-0386
■ Until Oct. 25
Taiwanese artist Tsai I-ju’s (蔡宜儒) solo exhibition combines contemporary ink painting techniques with other media to create abstract works that examine nature in all its fury.
■ Piao Piao Art Space (一票票藝術空間), 44 Yongkang St, Taipei City (台北市永康街44號). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 2pm to 10pm and Sundays from 2pm to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2393-7505
■ Until Oct. 4
Sculptures of confused porky pandas, surrealist ink paintings of the human anatomy and sketches of vacant-eyed men in business suites are among the works on display in Cardinal Number, a group exhibition by Taiwanese artists Liu Je-rong (劉哲榮), Huang Yao-hsin (黃耀鑫) and Wang Ting-chao (王鼎超).
■ BF Gallery (北風藝廊), 2F, 120, Minsheng E Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市民生東路二段120號2樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2561-6516
■ Until Oct. 18
The title of Chu Ko’s (楚戈) solo exhibit Artistic Creation Must Have Fun (創作就是要好玩) aptly expresses the artistic philosophy of the China-born, Taiwan-based multimedia artist. Chu’s watercolors and oil paintings infuse traditional Chinese landscape ink painting with vibrant colors. This exhibit also features some of his sculptures.
■ National Chiao Tung University Art Space (交大藝文空間), 1001 Dasyue Rd, Hsinchu City (新竹市大學路1001號). Open daily from 10am to 7pm, closes at 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. Tel: (03) 571-2121
■ Until Oct. 21
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located