Drawing on his own personal experience witnessing the collapse of Keelung’s fishing and mining industries, Lien Chien-hsing’s (連建興) new series of paintings, Between Reality and Fiction: Sceneries of the Mind (擬像風景), depicts surreal landscapes of dilapidated buildings and abandoned parks populated with all manner of beast, both mythical and real. According to Eslite’s press release, the paintings not only inspire fear due to loss, but also coalesce “a civilizational memory of a particular time” that seeks to create a “space of spiritual transcendence and elevated consciousness.” They do just that without over-sentimentalizing what has been lost.
■ 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
■ Until July 8
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
The press release for Unique Expression (南瀛奇葩), a solo exhibit by Huang Teng-shan (黃登山), starts out with these heady words: “With his bold and generous character, sensitivity for color and expertise in calligraphy, Huang Teng-shan has developed a unique expression of painting, in different media including oil, pastel and ink.” Perhaps, but the works on display, landscapes, cityscapes and still lifes dated between 2000 and 2012, do little to broaden the genres in which they are painted.
■ Art Den (藝研齋), 3F, 309, Xinyi Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市信義路四段309號3樓), tel: (02) 2325-8188. Open Mondays to Fridays from 11am to 5pm, and Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until July 21
Photo Courtesy of Wisteria Tea House
First Exit Existence II (真實的存在 II) is a duo exhibition of sculpture by Lin Chih-heng (林志恆) and Hong Chien-che (洪健哲), both of whom take the natural world — trees, rocks and plants — as the starting point to create moderately interesting abstract works.
■ 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 July 1
Sojourning a Veiled World (逆旅悠塵) presents a new series of charcoal-on-paper drawings by France-based artist Leung Siu Hay (梁兆熙). Fossils, trees, horses and flowers are among the subjects Leung depicts with a realistic style tinged with expressive — and expressionist — line flourishes that reveal an artistic disposition, the gallery’s press release suggests, reminiscent of a the Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting.
■ Wisteria Tea House (紫藤廬), 1, Ln 16, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16巷1號), tel: (02) 2363-7375. Open daily from 10am to 11pm
■ Until July 15
Dubbed the first biennial of video art in southern Taiwan, the Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (台灣國際錄影藝術展) brings together 55 video works — ranging in length from 58 seconds to 58 minutes — by artists from Taiwan, Sweden, Spain, the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan and the US. Curated by Chen Yung-hsien (陳永賢) and Sean C.S. Hu (胡朝聖), the exhibition has two themes, Eattopia and Dwellng Place, both of which ask the viewer to ponder the relationship between the food we eat and its effects on where we live. Exhibiting artists include Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁), Tsai Char-wei (蔡佳葳) and recent Taishin Arts Award-winner Jao Chia-en (饒加恩).
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Until Sept. 9
New Zealand artist Kerry Ann Lee, an international artist-in-residence at Taipei Artists Village, will give a one-off presentation of her art project at the Ruin Academy (廢墟建築學院), an abandoned building close to Ximen MRT Station, Exit 2 (西門捷運站2號出口). The Parallel City Picture Show is a slide projection installation of lost and found text and images inside the recently closed space, and is a response to urban structures, dislocation, touristic and local knowledge of independent spaces and culture in Taipei city.
■ Ruin Academy (廢墟建築學院), 2, Ln 85, Zhonghua Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市中華路一段85巷2號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Admission: Free
■ Saturday from 6pm to 9pm
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