Philip Beesley, Eelco Brand, Scottie Huang Chih-chieh (黃致傑) and Tseng Wei-hau (曾偉豪) are among the artists participating in Mobile Forest (機動—森林), a group exhibition of interactive mechanical installations and digital image works that highlight life forms that transcend the boundary between machines and plants, and suggest a different kind of evolutionary trajectory that is both natural and artificial.
■ Digital Arts Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: Free
■ Until Aug. 5
Photo courtesy of DAC
The Emperor’s Treasure Chest of the City (城市的影像多寶閣) brings together a new series of sculptural installations by Tu Wei-cheng (涂維政). Tu, whose previous work includes creating faux archeological remains of ancient civilizations, presents a variety of motion picture objects — zoetropes, film projectors and monitors, all encased in wood, lending them an antique appearance — that lead the viewer to ponder devices that have altered the way we perceive, record and depict the world.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until Aug. 12
Photo courtesy of 99 Degrees Art Center
Songs of Panda (熊貓之歌) is a solo show of new work by renowned ink painter Lo Ching (羅青). Known as an innovator of the form — he often punctuates his traditional landscape paintings with industrial and post-industrial elements such as skyscrapers and freeways — Lo here employs pandas that, according to his artist’s statement, “often lives quietly by the meandering brooks and saunters pensively among the bamboos,” as a symbol of the Confucian gentleman.
■ 99 Degrees Art Center (99°藝術中心), 5F, 259, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段259號5樓), tel: (02) 2700-3099. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Until Aug. 29
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
In its fifth incarnation, the 2012 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale (臺灣國際陶藝雙年展) pays tribute to the art of ceramics with a competition that saw 651 artists from 54 countries submit work, from which 111 objects from 27 countries were chosen and are currently on display at the Yingge Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City. This year’s overall theme is “manifestation” and is divided into four broad categories: physical, mental, environmental and existential. For a comprehensive look at the works and biennale, visit their excellent Web site in Chinese and English at: public.ceramics.ntpc.gov.tw
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yingge Dist, New Taipei City (新北市鶯歌區文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm. Closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sunday. Admission: Free
■ Until Nov. 4
Respected art historian and critic Jason Wang (王嘉驥) is the curator of Man, Animal, Landscape (人‧獸‧風景), a group exhibition of emerging painters — Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣), Lin Yen-wei (林彥瑋) and Lin Wei-hsiang (林煒翔) — who variously examine issues such as Taiwan’s current media spectacle, the perceived frivolousness of the younger generation and humanity’s alienation from nature.
■ 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 Aug. 5
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
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
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