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
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless