Taiwanese contemporary painters Hung Tung-lu (洪東祿) and Red Capsule (紅膠囊) personify their inner experiences with The Universe in Mind (一念萬象). Employing a visual style reminiscent of Japanese manga, the two artists explore the “tragedies and comedies” in their lives through the fictitious characters Little Red (小紅) and Dog Face Man (狗臉男).
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 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 May 16
The Moment of Landscape — Paintings by Contemporary Chinese Masters (此景此情：大陸油畫名家寫生展) features 66 representational landscape oil paintings by 10 artists from China. In addition to displaying 56 of their earlier works, TFAM invited the participating artists to paint Taiwan’s landscapes and cityscapes, the results of which are also on view.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2595-7656
■ Until May 9
Taiwanese digital photographer Chen Wan-ling (陳宛伶) ponders the experience of travel in A Little Factory of Life (小生活工場). Chen’s images of people driving in cars or airplanes flying out of a vortex examine larger questions of human migration and the difference between the movement of the human body and that of the vehicles they create.
■ Der Horng Art Gallery (德鴻畫廊), 1 Jhongshan Rd, Tainan City (台南市中山路1號). Call (06) 227-1125 for a viewing
■ Until Sunday
The buildings and spaces of his native Xian preoccupy Chinese painter Wang Fenghua (王風華) in his solo exhibit at Gallery J. Chen. Instead of nostalgically resurrecting Xian’s rich archeological history, he depicts structures — apartment blocks, airports, train stations — that serve as symbols of modern life. Feng’s visual style — both in terms of its subtle shading and his emphasis on rectangles and squares rendered in a subdued palette — evokes David Hockney’s early Pop Art works.
■ Gallery J. Chen, 3F, 40, Ln 161, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段161巷40號3F). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2781-0959
■ Until May 9
Existential Emptiness (真空妙有) is a solo exhibit by Chinese conceptual photographer and video artist Cui Xiuwen (崔岫聞). Cui’s photographs, which have been collected by the Tate Modern Art Gallery and Pompidou Center, focus on the struggles of young women growing up in a rapidly modernizing China and the changing roles and relationships between women and men.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until April 25
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, presents an exhaustive retrospective of the work of world-renowned American photographer David LaChapelle. LaChapelle, who hit New York’s art scene in the early 1980s as a protege of Andy Warhol, has photographed many of American’s top celebrities — from Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie to Gene Simmons and Hugh Hefner — covering themes such as religion, war, celebrity and the environment. His peculiar and unmistakable style of staged photography is characterized by glamorous aesthetics and dramatic tension that some have called kitsch and others high art.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 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. Admission: NT$50
■ Until May 30
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 In 1933, an all-star team of musicians and lyricists began shaping a new sound. The person who brought them together was Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉), head of Columbia Records’ arts department. Tasked with creating Taiwanese “pop music,” they released hit after hit that year, with Chen contributing lyrics to several of the songs himself. Many figures from that group, including composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), vocalist Chun-chun (純純, Sun-sun in Taiwanese) and lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) remain well-known today, particularly for the famous classic Longing for the Spring Breeze (望春風). Chen, however, is not a name
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