Italian contemporary artist Francesca Stasiano blends diverse materials such as charcoal, enamel, acrylics and lacquer to create three-dimensional paintings in her solo show Illusory Flora Resembling Shadow — The Story of Light and Shadow From Florence. Stasiano draws on her considerable experience of restoring classical paintings to create bas-relief works that merge disparate genres and philosophies of painting into a unique visual style.
■ Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914) Origino Art Space (M4 Building), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號). Open daily from 10am to 9:30pm. Tel: (02) 2395-7572
■ Until Nov. 29
Contemporary Taiwanese artist Sean Wang (王璽安) brings together a series of action paintings in Vision’s Ground Zero (視線的零度). Wang strips things such as an umbrella and a two-story house down to their most basic forms and places them on monochrome backgrounds, creating paintings that are almost postcard-like in their simplicity.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術中心), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 9pm, closes at 7pm on Sundays.
Tel: (02) 2707-6942
■ Until Dec. 20
Chiu Chao-tsai (邱昭財) pokes fun at the hubristic assumptions of famous people and the monuments they create in The World of Fatigue (疲軟世界). Through his manipulation of contemporary signs and symbols, such as the Eiffel Tower or Mao Zedong (毛澤東), Chiu offers a sardonic look at some of the globe’s most iconic images.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市中山區伊通街47號地下一樓). Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 2pm to 11pm and Fridays and Saturdays from 2pm to 1am.
Tel: (02) 2516-1060
■ Until Dec. 5
Examining life’s borders is the primary goal of Zone Indeterminate, an exhibit that brings together the work of three artists in residence at Taipei Artists Village. Australian artist Julie Bartholomew’s video installation, Vanishing Ground, examines disappearing spaces — cultural, communal and architectural — through water calligraphy. Argentine artist Florencia Levy explores the multiple networks and interactions among city dwellers in Commute Portraits: Taipei, while Lithuanian artists Paulius Kilbauskas and Sigitas Staniunas have created a series of paintings that search for the underlying disjunction between private and public spaces.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 3393-7377
■ Until Dec. 27
A series of interrelated and geometrically overlapping flowers rendered in brilliant hues suggest optimism and delight in Original Rhythm (原生的律動), a solo exhibit of pen and ink drawings by Tzeng Yong-ning (曾雍甯).
■ Aki Gallery (也趣), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2599-1171
■ Until Nov. 29
Taiwanese performance artist Yeh Yi-li (葉怡利) employs disparate genres — particularly action art and Cosplay — to create videos that examine a variety of emotional states and relationships in her solo exhibit at Gallery 100. These situations, which Yeh colors “Blue” and “Yellow,” become symbols of the eternal struggle for resources between species and the harmful toll it exerts on the natural environment.
■ Gallery 100, 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm.
Tel: (02) 2536-2120
■ Until Nov. 25
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would