With Art Taipei just around the corner, galleries throughout the capital are busy assembling the work of nascent artists. Fresh! Young Artists Group Show (新秀展,鮮!) presents the work of seven young artists working in mixed media, oil and gouache.
■ Aurum Glory Art Space (元華藝術空間), 4, Alley 2, Ln 39, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路二段39巷2弄4號). Open daily from 9am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2358-2080
■ Until July 21. Opening this Saturday at 3pm
Eddie Huang (黃鋐彬) combines the aesthetic language of oil painting, the medium in which he was trained, with computer graphics in a solo show of his computer-generated works, Traveling the Paths of Life (人生行路). Huang’s images, rendered in pastel hues, reflect on the rivers and mountains of his rural upbringing and the places he’s visited as a self-proclaimed artistic vagabond.
■ 99 Degrees Art Center (99藝術中心), 5F, 259, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段259號5F). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2700-3099
■ Until July 25
For those of you who didn’t make it to the comprehensive exhibit on Taiwanese photographer Chang Tsai (張才) at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum earlier this year, don’t miss out on Another Vision (另一個角度), a retrospective look at his images. Snapped between the 1940s and 1980s, Chang’s silver-grain photos capture everything from Taiwan’s traditional folk festivals to portraits of the country’s Aboriginal tribes.
■ Preparatory Office of the Taiwan Photo Museum (台灣攝影博物館預備館), 17, Ln 91, Zhonghua Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市中華路一段91巷17號). Open daily from 11am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2388-9693
■ Until Aug. 15
Painting and Calligraphy in Album Leaves: Solitariness in Mountain (冊頁書畫:獨坐孤山)presents a new series of figurative brush ink paintings by highly respected ink painter Yu Peng (于彭).
■ Chi-Wen Gallery (其玟畫廊) 3F, 19, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷19號3F). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 8771-3372
■ Until Aug. 8
This is the final week to apply for fellowships for Taipei Artist Village’s 2011 artist-in-residence program at any one of its three locations: Taipei Artist Village, Grass Mountain Village and Treasure Hill Artist Village. The residency programs and schedules for each location are different. Taipei Artist Village is also accepting applications for exhibit proposals for 2011. Complete details and submission guidelines can be downloaded from the Taipei Artist Village Web site under the “Residency” section, at www.artistvillage.org (Chinese and English). E-mailed applications will not be accepted.
■ Submission deadline for both projects is Sunday
■ For inquiries about the artist-in-residence program, e-mail air@artistvillage.org. For inquiries about the exhibition, e-mail exhibition@artistvillage.org
London-based moving image and digital arts organization, onedotzero, seeks submissions of short film, installation, interactive work and live audiovisual performance to showcase at its Adventures in Motion Festival, held at BFI Southbank (formerly known as the National Film Theatre), in London, beginning Nov. 10. The five-day festival is the first stop on onedotzero’s extensive worldwide network of events and is a great opportunity to get your work seen by a like-minded, connected and creative international community.
■ Submission deadline is July 16
■ Complete details and a submission form can be found at www.onedotzero.com
Taipei Travel (台北遊) is a group exhibit by artists working in oil and ink painting, photography and sculpture that celebrates the arrival of summer. But that’s where the theme of summer ends. The exhibit displays the work of established local artists such as Wu Tian-chang’s (吳天章) photographic compositions drawn from theater and Yuan Jai’s (袁旃) distortionist ink paintings, as well as up-and-coming artists such as Chang En-tzu (張恩慈), who combines embroidery with oil paint in works that ponder fairy tales.
■ Mot Arts, 3F, 22 Fuxing S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市復興南路一段22號3樓). Open daily from 11am to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2751-8088
■ Until Aug. 29
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not