LV Forest (LV森林) is a solo exhibition by Chinese video artist Bu Hua (卜樺). The animated video of the exhibit’s title employs a surreal and intentionally artificial visual language meant to underscore the rampant materialism gripping China’s urban inhabitants. The LV in the title is an unambiguous reference to the fashion label and here serves as a symbol for what the artist perceives as the increasingly superficial standards that people expect in relationships, an ideal whereby a woman exchanges her body for symbols of wealth. The exhibition also features other animated videos by Bu, as well as digital prints.
■ 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3樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 8771-3372
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Oct. 31
Wang Chi-sui (王綺穗) plays with perspective in her series of new landscape paintings Condensed Matter (凝態). The paintings suggest that regardless of how close we move towards the works, their intrinsic meaning is always beyond our grasp — an emblem, perhaps, of the self.
■ Jia Art Gallery (家畫廊), 1F-1, 30, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段30號1樓之1). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2591-4302
■ Until Oct. 10
National flags, maps and music form Universes in Universe (世界中的世界), a solo exhibit by installation and video artist Yu Cheng-ta (余政達). Yu, who sees himself as a kind of artistic anthropologist, accumulates and then arranges geographical and historical detritus throughout the gallery space to examine the nature of individuals and the countries within which they live.
* Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術), 17, Alley 51, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段12巷51弄17號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2578-5630
■ Until Sunday
Juin Shieh (謝鴻均) has decorated Sakshi Gallery’s walls with hundreds of variously sized circular and oval-shaped tissue paper in decorative patterns that resemble vines. The on-site installation, Immanence (囿), purports to examine the nature of women, where each work peels away the surface beauty to expose the trauma underneath. “[L]osing oneself in the creative process,” Shieh writes in the exhibition blurb, “all negative burdens that come with being a woman fade away; only the repetitive processes of creating and pondering about curtains and wallpaper remain.”
■ 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 and Sundays from 1:30pm to 7:30pm. Tel: (02) 2516-5386
■ Until Oct. 3
Dance of Knife and Stone (刀舞石飛) is a solo exhibit of seal carvings by Kao Lian-yong (高連永). The show is organized around four major themes, which include the styles of carving, for example low relief, and the content, such as poems, found therein. Kao’s more than 40 years of dedication to seal engraving is evident in his bold, firm and intense carving style in which the knife seems to move freely of its own volition, while the individual characters retain the refinement, dignity and power of calligraphy.
■ 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 Nov. 14
The debate over whether computer games are an art form is revisited in Fights, Flights, & Frights — Inside the Storm (大玩.特玩 — 遊戲美學), an exhibition of paintings, sketches and models culled from three popular games: StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft. Each of the three games exhibit different aspects of a genre — science fiction, horror and fantasy — and the museum space has been arranged to transport viewers to the fantasy worlds depicted in these games. Are computer games art? Who knows, but the setup of this exhibition makes it worthwhile — especially for gamers.
■ 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 Oct. 10
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located