Kate Chin (金質靈), who likes nothing more than to put on a leather jacket and ride a Harley Davidson, is a “liberated artist with attitude” declares the press release for her solo show at Jia Art Gallery (家畫廊). On the canvass, however, she employs her considerable talent to create works that the gallery describes as a hybrid of pop art and Chinese-style monotone ink painting, depicting horses and cows in vast, desolate landscapes to express loneliness.
■ 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 Aug. 5 at 2pm. Until Sept. 30
Photo courtesy of Jia Art Gallery
Tsao Liang-pin (曹良賓), Liao Yujun (廖逸君), Ahn Jun and Yojiro Imasaka are four contemporary photographers from, respectively, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan, who have come together to exhibit their work in A Vision Across Boundaries (跨渡縱目). The artists draw on their own cultural backgrounds to explore what it means to live and create in a different country – here the US – and how one makes sense of unfamiliar surroundings with the camera.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Until Saturday
Photo courtesy of IAR Art Resources
Dali: Mind of a Genius contains over 100 original works by the surrealist artist. The works on display encompass Dali’s long and prolific career, including sculptures and furniture, oil paintings and small ink sketches. The exhibition includes sections such as “Times,” a nod to his famous melting clock statues, and “Mythology,” which presents works that draw on allusions to Greek Mythology and Biblical stories.
■ Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號), tel: (02) 6630-8388. Open daily from 9am to 6pm. Admission: NT$250
■ Until Sept. 30
Artdoor Gallery is currently holding a double exhibition of calligraphy and traditional Chinese landscape painting by Chang Kuang-bin (張光賓) and Hu Ying-sheng (吳英聲).
■ Art Door Gallery (藝境畫廊), 5F, 36, Ln 164, Hulin St, Taipei City (台北市虎林街164巷36號5樓), tel: (02) 2345-6773. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 7pm
■ Until Aug. 5
The Power of Japanese Contemporary Sculpture is a group exhibition of sculpture by eight established contemporary artists from Japan, including Katsura Funakoshi, Katsuyo Aoki, Hiroto Kitagawa and Yoshihiro Suda. The artists work variously in wood, clay, plexiglass and paper.
■ 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 Aug. 5 at 3pm. Until Sept. 9
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