Passing Scenes: New Landscape Painting From Four Viewpoints (掠影 — 新風景四人展) presents 50 Western-style landscape paintings informed by an Asian sensibility from four contemporary artists: Shiau Bei-chen (蕭北辰), Ke Wei-kuo (柯偉國), Lin Chi-yu (林芝宇) and Cheng An-chi (鄭安齊).
■ 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
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Oct. 30
Teerawat Mulvilai’s first residency project four years ago at Taipei Artist Village explored the lives of Thai migrant workers living in Taiwan. With Tropical Plant, his current project, the Thai performance artist and documentary filmmaker seeks out the subjects he interviewed four years ago to see how they have managed to retain their own identities while making a life for themselves in Taiwan.
■ Grass Mountain Artist Village (草山國際藝術村), 92 Hudi Rd, Taipei City (台北市湖底路92號).
Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 10am to 4pm. Tel: (02) 2862-2404
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 11am. Until Oct. 24
Ten emerging Taiwanese artists offer different perspectives of life in the city through painting, photography and installation in Crowded Paradise (擁擠的樂園).
■ Shin Leh Yuan (SLY) Art Space (新樂園藝術空間), 15-2, Ln 11, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei (台北市中山北路二段11巷15-2號). Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm. Tel: (02) 2561-1548
■ Reception on Saturday at 5pm. Until Oct. 17
Watch Time Watching (看時間看) is a solo exhibit by Kao Chung-li (高重黎). Kao employs different techniques derived from film and animation to explore the nature of the moving image and its influence on our perceptions of time.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 1F, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號一樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm.
Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until Sept. 26
After several years of silence, installation artist Shy Gong (施工忠昊) returns with Taike Fantasy (台客幻想曲). The work consists of nine two-dimensional images and uses a “comical and satirical approach to portray the bitter-sweetness in Taiwanese society,” aspects that are meant to exemplify taike (台客), a once pejorative term now employed to celebrate Taiwanese culture. The reality, however, is that these “digital paintings,” with their geometrical structures resembling microscopic organisms, adds little to our understanding of the genre, the “Taike” in the title seemingly little more than a sobriquet to attract people to the exhibit.
■ 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. General admission is NT$50
■ Until Oct. 31
Her Story — Photographic Works From the Museum’s Collection (她們的故事 — 館藏女性圖象攝影展) examines the “progress of a woman’s life cycle,” in an exhibit that attempts to capture the “collective memory of countless ordinary women.” According to the National Museum of History’s press blurb, this includes women “in many different roles: working women, mothers, models, etc.” Let’s hope the “etc” means more than simple patriarchal assumptions about the role women should play in society.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館),
49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號).
Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
Tel: (02) 2361-0270. General admission is NT$30
■ Until Oct. 24
With subject headings such as “Straight Talk,” “Don’t mention politics, religion or sex!” and “Subversive Arguments,” the Yingge Ceramics Biennial seems intent on contemporizing this often-staid medium. The biennial, entitled Korero — a Maori term that suggests an exchange of information or dialogue — brings together 43 artists from 17 countries and offers an interesting look at different approaches to ceramics, including contemporary manifestations along with more traditional forms.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yinge Township, Taipei County (台北縣鶯歌鎮文化路200號). Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm, closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
Tel: (02) 8677-2727. General admission is NT$99
■ Until Oct. 31
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