Infinity Dots is a retrospective of art by renowned Japanese painter Yayoi Kusama, whose work is inspired by the auditory and visual hallucinations she began experiencing as a young child. In Kusuma’s colorful creations, the Earth is just one of a million dots which are the “cells and molecules” of the universe. This show brings together paintings, sculptures and an installation mural composed of a celluloid doll army.
■ 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
■ Until Oct. 28
Photo courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
The 7th Annual Tagboat Award invited four jurors — Tomio Koyama from Tomio Koyama gallery, Shigeo Goto, organizer of Tokyo Front Line, Daisuke Miyatsu, professor at Kyoto University and Aki gallery owner Rick Wang — to select five promising young Japanese artists from a pool of over 380 participants. Winning works will be exhibited at Aki gallery next week. These include sculptures by Tomohiro Higashikag, who uses representations of animal heads to explore themes of life and death. Satoshi Aoki, creates very fine but irregular lines on Japanese paper with colored ink. Ayako Kato’s paintings explore the connection between people and the environment. Dogs represent different human personalities in the works of Kaori Ogishima. Hiroshi Mori, who already enjoys a following in Taiwan, examines instability in society with his work. Art by Toyo Horikawa and Tatsuya Kikuchi will also be on display.
■ 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
■ Sept. 19 to 30, reception on Sept. 22
Photo courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
The Pervasive Space (前前後後 來來回回 流動的空間) features artist Emily Shih-chih Yang’s (楊世芝) collages. Though energetic, curvaceous lines and shapes in Yang’s artwork appear to be fluid brushstrokes, they are in fact made of many tiny bits of paper carefully pieced together. Every single scrap also has a message brushed onto it in tiny calligraphic strokes. Yang says each of her collages, made without any planning or sketches, capture all the emotions she feels as she allows each image to emerge organically.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Until Oct. 13
Photo courtesy of IT Park Gallery
Advance tickets for the second annual Taiwan Photo (台灣攝影藝術博覽會) will be available starting tomorrow on the event’s Web site (www.taiwanphotofair.com). The exhibition, which will run from Oct. 5 to Oct. 10 at Xinyi District’s Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, brings together a mix of emerging and established photographers, galleries and studios in an intimate environment. This year’s special guests include Japan’s Photographer Hal and England’s Thomas Hodges. Advance tickets are available through Sept. 30 and are NT$120 each or NT$270 for an early bird package including an exhibition catalog. For more information in English and Chinese, visit: http://www.taiwanphotofair.com
Juin Shieh’s (謝鴻均) solo show From Single to Dual, From Dual to Single (一二‧二一) is a two-part retrospective of the artist’s work, following the development of her painting style over the last 15 years. Each of Shieh’s abstract canvases contain symbols that represent female characters in different novels, including the protagonist of Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
■ Mind Set Art Center, 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Tuesdays to Sunday 2pm to 6pm
■ Part 1 of the exhibition runs until Oct. 14. Part two starts on Oct. 19 and runs until Nov. 11
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
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
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built