Beyond Gazing: Communion with the Permanent Collection (凝望之外/典藏對語) brings together 50 works from the museum’s permanent collection spanning the past century and includes painting, sculpture and installation. Broken down into seven sections, it includes people, words, symbols, landscape and flora and fauna as its major themes. The exhibition’s raison d’etre is to “underscore the graphic language embodied and their artistic significance and cultural symbolism,” the museum states in its introductory blurb.
■ 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. Admission: NT$30
■ Begins Saturday
Photo courtesy of TFAM
Confused, Not Confused? (惑不惑之抽象不抽象) is a group exhibition of contemporary art from Japan, Taiwan and China that runs the gamut of expressionist painting, surreal sculpture and graffiti-like illustration — all with a kitschy “animamix” aesthetic sensibility.
■ 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 June 15
Photo courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Chinese artist Wang Tiande (王天德) brings the classical tradition of literati landscape painting into the contemporary world with Lonely Mountain (孤山), his first solo exhibition in Taiwan. Wang, known for his “baptism by fire” mountain-water paintings made from cigarette ash, returns to the genres of his literati roots with a series of ink wash paintings inspired by monumental calligraphy steles, which he then complements with mountain-water paintings made with the ashes of burnt incense.
■ 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 7pm. Until July 23
Chen Sung-chih (陳松志) returns to Project Fulfill Art Space with a new series of installations that move beyond his previous glass and sand works, while retaining an abstract expressionist visual language using compound material with wood being the key element. The gallery will hold a panel discussion on Chen’s work on Saturday beginning at 3pm.
■ 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
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 4pm. Until July 15
Jia Art Gallery will open two exhibitions this weekend. Something of a mouthful, Evelyn Ran’s Artistic World — Her Friend’s Little Secrets Unfold (冉綾珮的藝想世界─從窗外窺探朋友的小祕密) is simplicity incarnate. Ran’s simple characters on a background of solid pastel coloring evoke the innocence of childhood. Meanwhile, in Hazel Tan’s Black and White Photo Exhibit (Hazel,一個人的旅行), photographer Hazel Tan (陳姿霖), who the gallery assures us is “a very bright and cheerful Singaporean young woman,” presents black-and-white photographs snapped on a recent trip to Europe with an emphasis on classical architecture.
■ Jia Art Gallery (家畫廊), 1F-1, 30, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段30號1樓之1), tel: (02) 2591-4302. Open daily from 10am to 6pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until July 28
Anyone interested in contemporary photojournalism will want to check out Taiwan Press Photo Contest Exhibition (台灣新聞攝影大賽) currently on view at TIVAC. Running the gamut of entertainment, the arts, the environment, politics and human interest stories, this exhibition presents some of the best photography taken by photojournalists and freelancers working for Taiwanese newspapers and magazines over the past year. The content was chosen by the Taiwan Press Photography Association (台灣新聞攝影研究會), Taiwan’s version of Magnum.
■ Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC — 台灣國際視覺藝術中心) 16, Alley 52, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段12巷52弄16號)
■ Until Sunday
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your