American artist Ray King uses light and glass to great effect in Adventures of Light and Color (以光之名). The three glass-and-metal sculptural installations on display at Taipei Artist Village combine visual elements drawn from Chinese history and philosophy and recreate them using contemporary materials.
■ 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
■ Opening on Friday from 7pm to 9:30pm. Until July 18
Back to Love (回到愛的星球), a group exhibition of photography, video and installation, examines the lives of people living in African countries. The show puts a positive spin on the lives of these people, offering a compassionate perspective on an underdeveloped continent.
■ 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
■ Begins on Friday. Until July 25
A new series of wooden sculptures by Hsiao Yi (蕭一) is currently on display at Lin & Lin Gallery. Hsiao’s kitschy representational sculptures of figures praying or riding motorcycles bear an uncanny resemblance to the works of Ju Ming (朱銘) — though without the latter’s depth of vision.
■ 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 July 4
Nature God is a solo exhibition by Chintan Upadhyay, an Indian artist who recently gained attention in Europe for burning cars as an act of defiance against that continent’s legal bureaucracy (apparently it’s okay to burn cars in India) while drawing attention to the world’s reliance on oil. Upadhyay’s Sakshi Gallery show is slightly tamer, featuring collage paintings of naked children that fuse pictorial elements from antiquity with religious iconography.
■ 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 July 11
Hierophany Consciousness (顯聖.意識) is a group exhibition of video and photo installation by six of Taiwan’s top artists. The show explores the country’s history, politics, culture and art. The artists are Huang Ming-che (黃銘哲), J.C. Kuo (郭振昌), Wu Tien-chang (吳天章), Kuo Shu-li (郭淑莉), Pai Tsung-chin (白宗晉) and Lai Hsin-lung (賴新龍).
■ La Chambre Art Gallery (小室藝廊), 31, Ln 52, Siwei Rd, Taipei City (台北市四維路52巷31號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2700-3689
■ Until July 11
A Decade of Reverie, Tales of Contemplation (織夢十年 靜思物語) is a solo exhibit of 12 oil paintings and eight pastels by Chinese artist Li Lan (朱禮銀). Li Lan’s nostalgic and exotic compositions of insects, women, clothing and architecture are fragments drawn from her daily life and imagination, rendered in rich colors that bring to life multiple worlds.
■ 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 June 26
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and