Never Ending Construction is a group exhibition by three Japanese artists working in installation and painting. The paintings of Reika Nakayama, who resides in Mexico, feature a background of vivid, colorful patterns in acrylic paint, to which she has added dynamic pencil drawings of animals and human figures. Sakae Ozawa creates a playful world of little girls in billowing dresses flirting with flying whales and dancing bears. Paramodel, an “art unit” comprising Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano, transforms the gallery space with their large installations comprising flowing lines and abstract geometric patterns.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until March 4
Photo Courtesy of Aki Gallery
Polyphony Beat (複音。節拍) is a dual exhibition of paper sculpture by Chu Wei-bor (朱為白) and Mia Liu (劉文瑄). The show seeks to show viewers the diversity and range of contemporary paper sculpture.
■ Kalos Gallery (真善美畫廊), 269, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段269號), tel: (02) 2836-3452. Open daily from 10am to 6:30pm, closed Sundays
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until March 3
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Book From the Sky to the Ground (從天書到地書) is a retrospective exhibit on the work of Chinese artist Xu Bing (徐冰). Xu’s installations question the notion that meaning can be communicated through language and how written words and symbols can be manipulated. In 1999, he received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award for his originality and contribution to printmaking and calligraphy.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388 X1588. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until April 1
Wonderland: New Contemporary Art From Australia is a wide-ranging exhibition that surveys art from Down Under. The 45 artworks by 24 artists include found objects, sculpture, documentary video, painting and interactive installation. The “richly illustrated catalogue,” says MOCA’s press blurb, brings together “22 prominent critics to introduce the historical and cultural contexts within which each artist has evolved their practice.”
■ 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. General admission: NT$50
■ Opening reception on Friday from 7pm to 9pm. Until April 15
In Girls — Spring (女孩春), Isa Ho (何孟娟) explores the traditional and (often) constricting roles of women in Taiwanese society and females’ quests for self-expression. Ho views her new series of photographs, which are shot from a bottom up perspective so that the viewer is constantly focused on the sky, as an “escape from the perspectives and values of seeing.”
■ InArt Gallery (加力畫廊), 315 Youai St, Tainan City (台南市友愛街315號), tel: (06) 221-3638. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm
■ Until March 11
Turning a Blind Eye (再見不尋常小事) is a joint exhibit of video and drawing by three Taiwanese artists. The videos of Chang Li-ren (張立人), winner of the 2009 Taipei Arts Awards (臺北美術獎), meditate on the changing ideas of beauty through images of women culled from Western art history. Lin Guan-ming’s (林冠名) drawings examine the estrangement of humans from the natural environment, which he views as a peculiar aspect of industrial and urban societies. Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣) assembles news media images in videos that blur the line between fiction and reality.
■ 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 March 17
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
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