Time Unfrozen — From Liu Guo-song to New Media Art (白駒過隙山動水行—從劉國松到新媒體藝術) examines the temporal, spatial and psychological connections between new media art and contemporary thought. Utilizing mature art forms such as light, sound, new technology, video and installation, as well as avant-garde modalities such as virtual reality and co-intelligence, 19 collaborative teams were brought together to explore Eastern aesthetics, particularly the relationship between humanity and nature.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM — 台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號). Open daily from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closes at 9:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2595-7656
■ Begins Saturday. Until Jan. 2
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
South Korean sculptor Park Seung Mo presents a new series of sculptures in a solo exhibit at Ever Harvest Gallery. Park continues his tradition of wrapping aluminum and copper wire around objects, such as a bicycle or piano, which makes the original form less insignificant while retaining its essence.
■ Ever Harvest Art Gallery, 2F, 107, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段107號2樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2752-2353. Admission: Free until Nov. 26
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Nov. 7
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
Grace Wawa Yang (楊后瑜) looks back at the freedom of childhood with In Between (曖), a solo exhibit that consists of two series of photographs — Memento Mori (2008) and Realm of Play — Reverie (2009-2010) — and a video installation. Yang’s work is intended to return the viewer to childhood, a time associated with freedom and fun, but also when we learn about rules and boundaries by testing them.
■ Sakshi Gallery (夏可喜當代藝術), 33 Yitong St, 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 Nov. 7
PHOTO COURTESY OF EVER HARVEST GALLERY
Just when you thought that the Polaroid camera was relegated to the dustbin of archaic technologies, the folks from the company came up with a new monochrome film, PX Silver Shade, which it released earlier this year. A series of images made by three Taiwanese photographers using the film are currently on display in an exhibit titled Impossible. The images take Taiwan as the main subject — a wedding banquet, for example, or a seascape.
■ Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (台灣國際視覺藝術中心), 29, Ln 45 Liaoning St, Taipei City (台北市遼寧街45巷29號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2773-3347
■ Until Nov. 14
Infinity of Chi is a retrospective exhibit of China-born, Taiwan-raised and Italy-based artist Hsiao Chin (蕭勤). Hsiao, the winner of the 2002 National Fine Art Prize (國家文藝獎), studied abstract painting and was a prominent advocate of the avant-garde wave of Taiwanese modern art during the 1950s. Hsiao’s art contains both the distinctive style of modern art, as well as the profound philosophical influence of the East.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Kaohsiung City (高雄市美術館路80號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Tel: (07) 555 0331. Admission is NT$200, NT$150 for seniors and students
■ Until March 13
Paintings, calligraphy, antiquities and rare books form Dynastic Renaissance: Art and Culture of the Southern Song (文藝紹興-南宋藝術與文化特展), a wide-ranging exhibit that is displayed in 10 galleries on the first and second floor of the National Palace Museum. In four sections — Cultural Invigoration, Artistic Innovation, Life Aesthetics and Transmission and Fusion — the exhibit seeks to reveal how the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) employed innovative artistic tastes and aesthetic ideas to perpetuate its rule. [See story opposite.]
■ 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, closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2881-2021. Admission is NT$160, NT$80 for students
■ Until Dec. 26
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would