Shintaro Miyake’s playfully exuberant and colorful, almost psychedelic pen and pencil artworks feature a wildly creative cast of creatures: clam-headed characters lined up in battle formation, or squid-like figures whose tentacles languidly reach out for enigmatic mottos — “anytime is calm” or “the hilltop of Mandarin fields.” A Commonplace Tale presents the Japanese artist’s latest apocalyptic creations, rendered in his neo-pop style.
■ 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
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until May 20
Photo courtesy of Metaphyscial Art Gallery
I didn’t know whether to run screaming from Li Zhuo’s (李卓) paintings of landscapes in monochrome ultramarine or forest green, or accept them passively as one might a nightmare. Either way, the Chinese artist’s new series of large-scale paintings in Lonely Again (我們再次孤獨) will almost certainly elicit a strong reaction. There is a terrifying realism to these forests populated with mostly naked vagabonds, suggesting human estrangement from and fear of a natural environment that needs to be conquered. The artist will attend the opening reception.
■ Nou Gallery (新畫廊), 232, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段232號), tel: (02) 2700-0239. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3:30pm. Until June 2
Photo courtesy of Nou Gallery
Arctic Diary: The Wrong Ice (極地日誌:錯誤的冰塊) is a video installation by Tsui Kuang-yu (崔廣宇), completed after he attended a residency program inside the Arctic Circle. Shot in Spitsbergen, Norway and Taipei City, Tsui’s work contemplates the far north’s extreme environment, which he calls “an exercise in self-exhaustion against the face of rugged nature,” and the densely populated urban space of Taipei.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, 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 to Arctic Diary is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until May 20
There have been several retrospectives over the past few years that have examined Taiwan’s modern history through the lens of a camera. To Gaze and to Look Beyond: Eyes of Formosa (凝視.對望-福爾摩莎之眼攝影展) falls within this category and presents the work of 28 contemporary photographers — who the National History Museum dubs “Eyes of Formosa” (對望-福爾摩莎之眼). Respected photographers Chang Chao-tang (張照堂) and Tseng Miin-shyong (曾敏雄) chose the works based on photographic aesthetics and the recording of social life and contemporary objects.
■ 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
■ Begins Saturday. Until May 31
The term jinhuidui (錦灰堆 — literally a heap of refuse from ash) refers to a kind of literati montage painting originating in China’s Yuan Dynasty that takes used objects as its primary medium of creation. Contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Huan (張洹) has adopted the term to describe his new series of paintings, sculpture and installation in Jinhuidui (錦灰堆). It may seem strange that Zhang, an enfant terrible of China’s performance art scene in the 1990s, would draw upon a scholarly sub-genre, but the figurative and metaphorical motifs of detritus that underlie it seem eminently suited to his sensibility.
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號), tel: (02) 2536-2120. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until May 27
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50