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
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
By far the most jarring of the new appointments for the incoming administration is that of Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to head the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). That is a huge demotion for one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tseng has one of the most impressive resumes in the party. He was very active during the Wild Lily Movement and his generation is now the one taking power. He has served in many of the requisite government, party and elected positions to build out a solid political profile. Elected as mayor of Taoyuan as part of the
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50