Space and its relationship to human existence forms the theme of Urban Landscape, a new series of paper sculptures by Japanese artist Katsumi Hayakawa. Hayakawa’s 15 sculptures, built up with small rectangular and square cubes of paper, convey feelings of both expansion and constriction, and of living in densely populated urban centers full of skyscrapers and cubicle-like living quarters. As part of the exhibit, the gallery will invite 100 people to construct their own “dream home” with “paper bricks” — the basic element in Hayakawa’s artworks. Details can be found at: www.nougallery.com.
■ Nou Gallery (新畫廊), 232, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段232號), tel: (02) 2700-0239. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3:30pm. Until June 19
Photo courtesy of Nou Gallery
HELLO GOODBYE is a group exhibit that presents the work of resident artists and artist groups from Treasure Hill Artist Village. The exhibit’s title follows Monster Chang’s (張淑滿) examination of the greeting (hello) and farewell (goodbye) through imagery. Nick Gang’s (甘燿嘉) video Making Pictures of the Dead (遺照製作) pieces together photos as a means of examining the past while looking toward the future. Open Lab, a two-member art group consisting of Jin Chi-ping (金啟平) and Wu Guan-ying (吳冠穎), has produced a digital, interactive device called Denki Monster (電子妖怪祭) that reacts to electronic frequencies.
■ Attic Gallery (閣樓展覽室) and Cross Gallery (十字藝廊), Treasure Hill Artist Village (寶藏巖國際藝術村), 9, 11 and 13, Alley 59, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷59弄9, 11, 13號), tel: (02) 2364-5313 X121. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 3pm to 6pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Opening reception on Sunday at 2pm. Until June 26
Photo courtesy of TAV
Frame-Painting-Image (框-畫-影像) is a new series of abstract paintings by Taiwan-born, France-based artist Kevin Yu (游克文). Yu’s canvases consist of geometric squares and rectangles interspersed with thick flowing lines. Some feature a tiny video screen embedded in the center, enabling the viewer to ponder the contrast between a painted surface and video, mobility and immobility, the fleeting and the permanent on a two-dimensional surface.
■ Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), 209-1, Chengde Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市承德路三段209-1號), tel: (02) 2587-3412. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until June 16
For many in Taiwan, jade symbolizes the highest ethical values of humankind and is imbued with philosophical meaning and spiritual value. Jade and the Age of Prosperity (玉映豐年) presents 250 jade artifacts bearing religious, political, ceremonial and funerary functions from the collection of jade connoisseur Cheng Jiuan-min (鄭俊民).
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until June 12
The Evolutionary Reiterator (複衍者) brings together the photographic installations of three emerging artists: Chen Yu-erh (陳佑而), Chen Che-wei (陳哲偉) and Liu Chih-hung (劉致宏). The artists examine the nature of boundaries and space within the context of visual memory.
■ Agora Art Space (藝譔堂), 104, Ln 155, Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路155巷104號), tel: (02) 8712-0178. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until June 26
One Piece Room is a new series of geometrically abstract, acrylic on canvas paintings by Li Cheng-hsun (李政勳). Li applies thick layers of paint to create a complex, three-dimensional effect, with each layer serving as a metaphor for Li’s emotional state.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2893-8870. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until June 12
Straight and curved lines serve as symbols of conflict and birth, death and sex, in a new series of sculptures by Barry You (游忠平) titled A Praise of Life: Modern Sculpture in Ceramics (生命的禮讚). You’s geometrically abstract sculptures, made with colored and colorless glazes, appear to be suspended in mid air.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yingge Dist, New Taipei City (新北市鶯歌區文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm, closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays
■ Until June 12
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