Two biennials are set to begin Saturday. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s (TFAM) Modern Monsters / Death and Life of Fiction (現代怪獸 / 想像的死而復生) addresses the relationship between historiography and the imaginary. Inspired by a recent study titled The Monster That is History by Taiwanese historian David Der-wei Wang (王德威), the Biennial engages with the aesthetics of monstrosity. The figure of the monster is treated as a fictional, liminal character, “a symptomatic mirror of actual and imaginary relations,” according to the press blurb.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Begins Saturday, Until Jan. 13
Photo courtesy of TFAM
Artists in Wonderland is the title of this year’s Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts biennial. The museum will present 10 solo exhibitions by 10 Asian artists hailing from Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China, Japan and Australia. As the biennial’s title implies, the themes revolve around an explication of what lies within the imagination of the artists, suggesting that it’s an “aesthetic speculation of the world, subconscious outlet for imagination, … and a pursuit of historical myths.”
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2893-8870. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Starts Saturday. Until Dec. 16
Going Forward, Going for the Money (向錢進) is an exhibition by Chinese artists Wu Shaoxiang (吳少湘) and Jiang Shuo (蔣朔) who seek to illustrate the idea that China is experiencing a nationwide transformation from “going forward” to “going for money.” Wu uses currency as the “unit” of modelling, turning these objects into visual metaphors of greed. Jiang’s sculptures recall the cruelties of youth, a time when one inflicted violence unconscious of its greater effect on the subject it’s directed at. Jiang, as a former Red Guard, implicitly directs criticism at himself.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission for Going Forward is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until Nov. 11
Quiet noise (靜噪) is a solo exhibition of sound art by Wang Fu-jui (王福瑞). For Wang, the title refers to an opaque state of living or the connection between urban sounds and the space in which they exist. The exhibition presents two installations and six prints.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until Nov. 3
Subtle Ink (墨妙無前) is an exhibition of ink painting by Li Jin (李津) and Li Huayi (李華?), two Chinese artists who employ different styles to show their understanding of the medium. According to Gallery 100, Li Jin captures fragmented figures and subject matter that lies somewhere between abstraction and figurative drawing. Li Huayi’s landscape paintings are inspired by the cracked brushstroke method, which was given full expression during the Northern Sung (960-1127 AD), and which he then combines with the pictorial ideas of light and space in Western visual arts. Combined, the exhibition seeks to present both traditional ideas of ink painting and how contemporary artists re-interpret it for a new generation.
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號), tel: (02) 2536-2120. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Oct. 21
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
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