The Melody of Wonderland (仙境美樂地) is a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Jun T. Lai (賴純純) dating back to 1983. The works on display focus mainly on Lai’s abstract and abstract expressionist works.
■ Kalos Gallery (真善美畫廊), 269, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段269號), tel: (02) 2836-3452. Open daily from 10am to 6:30pm, closed Sundays
■ Until Dec. 22
Photo Courtesy of MOT/Arts
Finger on the Void (指虛錄) brings together new paintings by Lin Ju (林鉅). The 19 works on display — representational but fantastical terrains devoid of humans, though here punctuated with Buddhist statuary and there strangely twisted foliage or a pebbles — serve as dialectical puzzles or mysteries to contemplate, and reference Buddhist and Taoist philosophical principles revolving around negation and death. Though somewhat metaphysical, Lin’s canvases, especially his landscapes, speak to the subconscious.
■ 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 Dec. 16
Chinese artist Li Rui (李瑞) recalls the pastoral landscapes of his youth in a new series of paintings, Seamless (山水無痕). Li portrays the pure, quiet beauty of Yunnan through delicate brushstrokes. Li’s artworks are closely bound up with the natural scenery of China’s Yunnan province, and express emotions such as freedom, romance and fantasy — states that are often absent from the realities of life on the ground. There will be over ten large-scale pieces depicting smoke and flowing mist, flowers and grass undulating in the wind and the alternation of day and night.
■ Chung Shan Creative Hub (中山創意基地), 21, Minsheng E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市中山區民生東路一段21號), tel: (02) 2751-8088. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:30am to 6pm
■ Until Dec. 16
C. J. Yeh’s (葉謹睿) solo show in MOCA, Taipei’s studio space, Pre-Purpose, Re-Purpose, De-Purpose (藝術與非藝術的醞釀、轉化與自我否決), is modeled after an autobiographical painting by French artist Gustave Courbet, who sought to join the personal with the aesthetic through a combination of symbolist and realist painting. Yeh’s Internet and social media-based installations do the same, offering an intimate portrait of an artist trying to make sense of the world around him and his place in it.
■ 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 Pre-Purpose, Re-Purpose, De-Purpose is free. General admission: NT$50
■ Until Dec. 2
AI Plus (人工智能.改) is an exhibit of new media that ponders the impact of artificial intelligence on society through the work of six artists: Chen Chu-yin (陳珠櫻) and Jean-Claude Hoyami, Scottie Chih-chieh Huang (黃致傑), Golan Levin, Lin Fang-yu (林方宇) and Marc Lafia, Lin Shih-chang (林世昌), Kyle McDonald and Casey Reas. The exhibition features interactive AI and mechanical devices, computer-simulated environments and visual modeling regenerated by artificial intelligence.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wucyuan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2372-3552. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Feb. 17
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would