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
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
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