Embroidery, knitting, weaving and painting are among the variety of media Lo Tsen (洛貞) uses in her series of installations called Gradual Rebirth (冉冉 再生). The works found in the solo show are abstract ideas about the relationship between the artist’s concern for environmental issues and her ongoing quest for her creative voice.
■ Angel Art Gallery (天使美術館), 41, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段41號). Open daily from 10am to 9pm.
Tel: (02) 2701-5229
■ Until Dec. 20
The motifs and themes found in Japonism, a style of 19th century Japanese art that influenced European artists during the same period, is considered and expanded on by Japanese painter Toru Otsuki in his solo show The Floating World of Fetishism (戀物花漾浮世繪). Otsuki’s visual style, reminiscent of Gustav Klimt, shows attractive young women who appear as symbols of beauty and desire. The two-dimensional figures share space with elements drawn from nature such as flowers and birds, which also become design elements on the clothes worn by the women. Otsuki updates the tradition with the addition of manga and anime forms and figures.
■ Ever Harvest Art Gallery, 2F, 107, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段107號2樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2752-2353
■ Until Dec. 31
Chung Chiun-hsiung (鐘俊雄) seeks to express his inner world at a solo exhibit of his work at Fun Year Art Gallery. Chung’s acrylic and multi-media paintings of built-up pigment follow in the style of abstraction.
■ Fun Year Art Gallery (凡亞藝術空間), B1, 16, Ln 301, Henan St, Sec 2, Taichung City (台中市河南路二段301巷16號B1). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 2pm to 6pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 10:30am to 6pm. Tel: (04) 2703-2424
■ Until Dec. 20
Destiny Curve (軌跡大化) is a father and son joint exhibition by Yung Yu-yu (楊英風) and Arthur Yung (楊奉琛). Yung Yu-yu’s bronze sculptures are geometrically abstract creations that evoke nature’s many shapes — whether undulating waves or triangular mountains. Arthur Yung’s digital images of setting suns and outer space evoke a timeless beauty beyond the mundane.
■ Modern Art Gallery, B1, 9, Ln 155, Kungyi Rd, Taichung City
(台中市公益路155巷9號).
Call (04) 2305-1217 for viewing
■ Until Jan. 12
Deloks (回陽人) is an exhibit by contemporary artist and filmmaker Lin Tay-jou (林泰州). The title refers to the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a person returning to life after death. The show features five short films created by Lin between 2005 and 2009 that interweave reality and fiction, narration of facts and strong visuals. The films incorporate myths, fables and real-life interviews to explore death and the tragic nature of human existence.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3720
■ Until Jan. 17
Painter Lee Kuen-lin (李昆霖) continues his examination of isolation and loneliness at his solo exhibit at Lee Gallery. Painted in stark colors and simple shapes — a single tree on a mountaintop or a face peering through a desolate forest — Lee’s images conjure up a world where everyone has to individually examine their own mortality and their tenuous ties to others.
■ Lee Gallery (黎畫廊), 10, Ln 175, Da-an Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市大安路一段175巷10號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2325-6688
■ Until Dec. 27
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