Many of the landscape paintings by Hsieh Tai-cheng (謝岱成) on display in his solo show Insight to the Boundless (照見無垠) consist of puffy clouds floating over an ochre landscape with a peacock blue sky. According to the press blurb, Hsieh doesn’t consciously seek a recognized painting style or achieve completeness in his works. Rather, “he explores the possibilities of various visual languages and presentation in the gradual coloring process.”
■ 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
■ Until Feb. 5
Photo Courtesy of Art Door Gallery
In Tomb of Human Cloning (複製人墓), Lin Jun-liang (林俊良) ponders the relationship between humans and machines and how the latter enables the former to probe the nature of time. The exhibit includes video and photography.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until Feb. 19
Photo Courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Roaming Scenery (行走的風景) is a group exhibit of painting and sculpture by nine artists covering three generations. The exhibit offers several aesthetic approaches — hyperrealist, surrealist and impressionist — to the depiction of landscapes.
■ 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 Feb. 26
Animals, insects and plants are among the creatures Lin Ming-shiou (林明修) creates using discarded auto parts in Living Creatures (再生物), a solo exhibit of his sculptures. Although the press blurb reads like an ad for new age philosophy (“using the simple way to explain the difficult things in life”), Lin’s work addresses the transformative processes that exist in nature.
■ Anderson Art (安德昇藝術), 151 Zhouzi St, Taipei City (台北市洲子街151號), tel: (02) 8751-6565. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until Feb. 12
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, currently has two exhibits in its Studio space, as well as a sound performance tonight. Thingamabobs (內個), by UK-based Taiwanese artist Haniboi Lee (李翰), brings together several objects with an industrial design ethos. Colorful knick-knacks and functional bric-a-brac make Lee’s tiny sculptures appealing in a somewhat kitschy way. In the same space, Mexican artist Ricardo Sanchez Madrid reflects on the marginalization of homeless people with The Victory Over the Dead Room. In three parts, video, installation and sculpture, Victory uses recycled and waste materials — what the artist calls “social organic trash” — to examine the dark side of rampant consumerism. Finally, 12 sound artists from Taiwan and Japan will give a three-hour performance tonight beginning at 7pm called Noise x Beat (音波相乘). Admission to tonight’s performance is NT$400. Tickets can be purchased from Agora Art, tel: (02) 8712-0178, and MOCA, Taipei.
■ 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 Thingamabobs and The Victory Over the Dead Room is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until Jan. 15
Call for submissions
From now until June 15, the organizers of the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival are inviting applications from Taiwanese and foreign nationals for original feature-length, medium and short documentaries of any style and form, completed after July 1, 2010. Prizes, including US$10,000 in cash, are up for grabs in several categories. Winning films will be screened at the festival, which runs from Oct. 19 to Oct. 28. For complete details (Chinese and English), go to: www.tidf.org.tw
■ Until June 15
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated