Curated by Natasha Lo (羅健毓), Invisibleness is Visibleness: International Contemporary Art Collection of a Salaryman — Daisuke Miyatsu (癮行者-宮津大輔:一位工薪族的當代藝術收藏展) includes 62 pieces created by 52 artists from around the globe. The works come from Japanese contemporary art collector Miyatsu Daisuke’s personal collection, marking the first time since the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Taipei opened its doors a decade ago that the museum has worked with a single collector to arrange a contemporary art exhibition. Featured artists include big shots like polka-dot queen Yayoi Kusama, coprophiliac Paul McCarthy and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who represented the US at the Venice Biennale in 2007.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: NT$50
■ Begins on Saturday. Until Sept. 4
Photo Courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
Hotel 73 will open an exhibition called The Space Between (介乎空間) that features paintings by Canada-born, Taiwan-based artist Adam Dupuis. The works explore “in-between moments” through geometrical shapes, unusual characters and personal iconography on surreal washes of color.
■ Hotel 73 (新尚旅店), 73, Xinyi Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市信義路二段73號), tel: (02) 2395-9009. Open 24 hours every day
■ Reception on Sunday at 5pm. Until Sept. 30
The Latent and the Visible: Ben Yu Solo Exhibition (潛‧露─2011游本寬個展) showcases work by the conceptual photographer. The recent series is meant to “lessen the intuitive and visual images, and [use] lots of veiled, ambiguous and mysterious images,” according to an ambiguous and mysterious description on the gallery’s Web site.
■ 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
■ Reception on Sunday at 5pm. Until Aug. 6
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum presents Object Fantasy: Ting Ting Cheng Conceptual Photography Solo Exhibition (物件奇想:鄭亭亭概念影像展). Cheng, who studied in London and has taken part in residencies in England and Spain, uses imagery to explore social issues related to her concern with interactions between locals and outsiders. Her interests extend to a variety of issues, including foreignness as it exists in cities, Orientalism as it is expressed in Western societies, stereotypes of different countries and ethnicities, and the alienation that outsiders face in foreign lands.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (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), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm; open until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Until Aug. 7
The Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts has several new solo exhibitions on display. One Piece Room features Wu Tien-chang’s (吳天章) latest work, titled Luan (亂). 2011 Taishin Arts Award winner Chou Yu-cheng (周育正) presents Rainbow Paint (紅牌油漆), Tsai Kuen-lin’s (蔡坤霖) show is called Sound Box (音鄉), and Wang Chien-hao (王建浩) has Guide to Life (生活指南).
■ 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
■ One Piece Room will be on display until July 31. The other exhibitions run through Aug. 7
Recent works by the prolific Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林) are on display at Tina Keng Gallery. Kill Alice — Final Battle (追殺愛麗絲:最終的戰役:楊茂林個展) includes 32 works from the series Kill Alice, Great Buddhist Paradise II, and Prominent Leaders. Yang’s work is influenced by animation and manga, combining characters from those fields with Buddhist imagery in pieces that owe not a little to Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. A press release from the gallery says the show demonstrates “Yang’s interest in history, collective memory, and issues that extend beyond the artist’s life.”
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until July 31
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The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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