The Public Spirit — Beauty in the Making (走進公眾‧美化台灣) brings together the bucolic paintings of Yen Shui-long (顏水龍), who studied modern art in France and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. Yen’s drawings, prints and commercial designs are also on display to illustrate the diversity of the artist’s interests and his ideas about art.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 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 and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. General admission: NT$30
■ Opens on Saturday. Until Feb. 26
Photo courtesy of TFAM
Simplicity Meets Ethereality: A Passion for the Spirit of Painting (蒼樸‧清曠‧筆墨情) is a dual exhibition of Chinese landscape painting by Chang Kuang-bin (張光賓) and Lee Shien-wen (李賢文), both highly regarded ink painters and calligraphers.
■ Art Door Gallery (藝境畫廊), 5F, 36, Ln 164, Hulin St, Taipei City (台北市虎林街164巷36號5樓), tel: (02) 2345-6773. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 7pm.
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until Dec. 25
Tu Wei-cheng (涂維政) presents new sculptures and interactive installations in Optical Trick (視覺戲法). Tu, well known for his faux-archeology pieces “excavated” from ancient civilizations, in this exhibit assembled objects found in Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei, formed surreal sculptures resembling a cross between a wooden writing bureau and a movie projector that serve as a “slice of the unique local landscape,” according to the press release. The artist and gallery are also holding a treasure hunt. The first 120 visitors who find “treasure” will receive a work by Tu.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Until Dec. 24
I Paint, I Think, I Say (我畫‧我想‧我說) is a memorial exhibit in honor of Shiy De-jinn (席德進), an advocate of modern art following World War II, and the Nativist Movement (鄉土運動) in the 1960s. He passed away in 1981. The exhibit brings together 45 works consisting mainly of drawings completed on his travels through Europe and watercolors painted after his return to Taiwan. Overall, the exhibit seeks to reveal the evolution of his style, “from brilliant colors to humble and symbolic simplicity,” according to the museum’s press release.
■ 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 is NT$30
■ Until Dec. 12
The National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) merges the latest in digital technology with priceless works of art in NPM Digital (精彩數位故宮), an exhibit of interactive digital paintings that are meant to evoke the four seasons.
■ Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914), Boiler Room (鍋爐室), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號), tel (02) 2881-2021. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 10am to 5pm and Fridays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: Free
■ Until May 23
Call for submissions
From now until Dec. 23, the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館) is accepting applications for its artist-in-residency program. Residencies last from two weeks to two months and the museum provides accommodation, a studio and facilities for the artists as well as a support team. Taiwan passport holders are not eligible to apply.
■ For details visit: www.kdmofa.tnua.edu.tw (Chinese and English)
■ Until Dec. 23
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not