Homunculus (人造人) is a group exhibit by seven artists who employ painting as a medium to contemplate the changes in how people are depicted in the age of digital media.
■ A Gallery (一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm. Tel (02) 2702-3327
■ Until May 30
Painter Lu Hsien-ming (陸先銘) deconstructs the colors and shapes of contemporary city life with Urban Memoir (城市隨筆). Whereas Lu’s earlier work focused on monumental constructions such as overpasses or skyscrapers — as well as the machines: tractors, cement trucks and steamrollers that help give shape to a city — this series adds the people, rendered in a hyper-realist style, who inhabit and construct these environments.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 13, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷13號). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2721-8488
■ Until May 30
Sakshi Gallery celebrates its first anniversary with an exhibition showcasing contemporary art from India by artists born between 1950 and 1980 and working in painting and installation. Ranbir Singh Kaleka’s realist paintings depict objects in perplexing tableaus that border on the surreal. Rekha Rodwittiyaj’s large-scale paintings of women resemble the thematic concerns of Gauguin portrayed with bold coloring and outlines reminiscent of Matisse. Sunil Gawde explores perception and reality through multimedia installations. Hema Upadhyay combines self-portraits with exotic patterns. Other artists include sculptor Jitish Kallat, whose is represented by Saatchi Gallery, and the artistic duo Thukral & Tagra, who work in video, sculpture and painting.
■ Sakshi Gallery (夏可喜當代藝術), 33 Yitong Street, Taipei City (台北市伊通街33號). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1:30pm to 9:30pm, Sundays from 1:30pm to 7:30pm. Tel: (02) 2516-5386
■ Until May 30
While Sakshi celebrates its first anniversary, Cathay United Art Center is holding a 10th Anniversary Exhibition. The group show brings together 25 emerging artists working in different genres of oil painting — realism, impressionism and abstract expressionism — and sculpture, particularly the female form.
■ Cathay United Art Center (國泰世華藝術中心), 7F, 236 Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路236號7樓). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2717-0988
■ Until June 12
Contemporary artist Emily Yang (楊世芝) continues her examination of abstract painting informed by Chinese calligraphy and landscape with Disorderly in Order (斷變之間). Expanding on themes developed in her 2007 show, Unconventional Strokes (筆墨可以橫著走), Yang seeks to build her frenetic paintings around a simple line.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm.
Tel: (02) 2507-7243
■ Until June 5
Travel Forever brings together four contemporary Japanese photographers who document their travels both at home and abroad. Naoki Honjo captures cities from a bird’s-eye perspective while Akiko Ikeda focuses in on minute details — strangers, birds and mailboxes — that she encounters on her travels, which she then folds into three-dimensional objects. Naoya Okazaki offers a bizarre perspective on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, while Hiroshi Ono’s photos of Amsterdam offer a humorous look at the city.
■ 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 May 30
This is the final week of Gold and Glory: The Wonders of Khitan From the Inner Mongolian Museum Collection (黃金旺族:內蒙古博物院大遼文物展), a special exhibit at the National Palace Museum that presents intricately carved artifacts, many made from silver and gold, from the Khitan, a tribe of nomads that virtually disappeared around the 13th century. [A review of the show can be found on Page 15 of the Feb. 10, 2010, edition of the Taipei Times.]
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221, Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm, open until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2881-2021. Admission: NT$250 (free admission for children under 115cm)
■ Until Sunday
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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