A new series of large-scale paintings by Chiu Hsien-te (邱顯德) will be shown at 99 Degree Art Center. The works are the product of a personal breakthrough in the use of watercolor. Chiu combines the medium’s transparency and washes of color with ink painting’s lyricism and the layering and color saturation of oil painting. These flowing effects bring the paintings to life, allowing viewers to ponder the artist’s expansive landscapes.
■ 99 Degree Art Center (99度藝術中心), 5F, 259, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段259號5樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2700-3099
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Feb. 20
Chinese painter Sang Huoyao (桑火堯) literally deconstructs his country’s landscape with Cosmic Spirit (境象), a new series of paintings. Not content with traditional ink materials, Sang works on silk cloth with paints made from mineral substances collected from various locations in China. The resulting ink wash paintings of dappled grays are expressionist renderings of the dichotomy between the Earth’s external appearance and the human body’s internal biology.
■ Soka Art Center (索卡藝術中心), 2F, 57, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段57號2樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2570-0390
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 4pm. Until Jan. 30
Chang Teng-yuan (張騰遠) claims to move beyond the limitations of seeing with The Edge of Sight — After (望穿術:凝結之後的事情), a solo show of animated installations and paintings. With the intention of challenging commonly accepted perceptions of how art is viewed, Chang’s intricately designed viewing devices and stylized imagery present an alternate reality using what the artist describes as “guerrilla images.”
■ 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
Ambiguity and uncertainty are the two themes that link the paintings by three emerging artists — Joyce Ho (何采柔), Wang Tzu-ting (王姿婷) and Chung Yi-lung (莊毅朗) — in a group show of their representational and surreal paintings at La Chambre Art Gallery.
■ 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 Jan. 22
Swing (游) brings together light installations made by Japanese artist Shimura Nobuhiro that have been displayed at venues throughout Taipei over the past year.
■ 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 11am to 7pm, closes at 5:30pm on Sundays. Tel: (02) 2516-5386
■ Until Jan. 31
If you like manga and anime, The Golden Present is an exhibition for you. It presents the work of some of Asia’s hottest contemporary artists working in the “Super Flat” and “animamix” genres, including superstars such as Yoshitaka Amano, Yoshitomo Nara, Kwon Ki-soo, Eddie Kang and Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林).
■ Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊), 7F, 219, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段219號7樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2711-0055
■ Until Jan. 26
Timed to coincide with the Taipei International Flora Exposition, Fragrance Fills the Courtyard: Chinese Flower Paintings Through the Ages (滿庭芳-歷代花卉名品特展) presents an historical overview of this sub-genre of ink painting. Divided into four sections — Beautiful Scenes All Year Round, Formal Expressions of the Mind, Their Many Features in Painting and Auspicious Signs and Lucky Omens — the works intimate the close connection flower painting has to the seasons and Chinese festivals. Additionally, the paintings demonstrate how artists used their skill of compositional arrangement and techniques such as ink outlines filled with colors, “boneless” washes, fine ink lines and freehand sketching to transform apparently simple flower subjects into a wide variety of forms.
■ 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 daily from 9am to 5pm. Tel: (02) 2881-2021. Admission: NT$160
■ Until May 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
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