Mia Liu (劉文瑄) presents a colorful mural made from paper in I Can’t Tell You, But You Feel It (我無法告訴你). Winner of the 2009 Kaohsiung Fine Arts Award, Liu’s exceptionally detailed and delicate installation was assembled from unsold Guggenheim museum tickets that she marks up and affixes together. The visual effect resembles the genre of geometric abstraction. Also on view are a series of installations created during her residency at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Scotland.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 7pm. Until Dec. 24
Photo Courtesy of IT Park Gallery
Subconscious Exploration (潛意識的表情) is a group exhibition of 10 painters and sculptors from Taiwan, China, South Korea and the US. Works range from the surreal children-filled landscapes of Gary Baseman to the cubist paintings of Hwang Jyi and the pop sculptures of Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林), which are inspired by Buddhist iconography. Other notable artists include Kwon Ki-soo and Lee Ming-tse (李明則).
■ 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), tel: (02) 2711-0055. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Until Dec. 25
Photo Courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Beyond Painting explores the “genes of creativity” underlying the expressionist paintings of Yang Chi-hung (楊識宏). The exhibit comprehensively examines his creative process and analyzes the elements and language of his art, which merges Western abstraction with traditional Chinese ink painting. In addition to the display of Yang’s paintings, the exhibition features the artist’s personal materials and documents, including drawings, sketches, poems and pictures.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Until Jan. 8
The paintings of Chinese artist Luo Quanmu (羅荃木) are currently on display at Gallery J. Chen. Luo’s atmospheric canvases in shades of green and blue depict peasants engaged in various kinds of manual labor.
■ Gallery J. Chen, 3F, 40, Ln 161, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段161巷40號3樓), tel: (02) 2781-0959. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm
■ Until Dec. 18
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei) describes Hsu Yung-chin’s (徐永進) calligraphy as focused and relaxed, with sensitive and precise expressions that are embodiments of Taiwan’s “local cultures with a strong sense of social concern.” Beyond Calligraphy (Beyond書法) brings together 15 of Hsu’s works to illustrate his foundation in the genre as well as his more recent works using acrylic on canvas.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 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 for Beyond Calligraphy is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until Sunday
The production of celadon pottery, known for its characteristic jade-green glaze, is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Ambient Green Flow —The Emergence and Rise of East Asian Celadon (青韻流動.東亞青瓷的誕生與發展) examines this revival with displays of ancient and modern celadon pieces from Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan — all countries with age-old celadon traditions. Fragments of an ancient kiln and celadon treasures from China, Korea and Japan will give viewers an understanding of the development of ancient celadon and allow them to appreciate its beauty.
■ 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 March 4
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