The Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊) has got some nice marquee names at its new group exhibition, The Invisible Medium (看不見的中間). Korean pop artist Kwon Ki-soo is showing Dongguri, his grinning alter ego, balanced on a sugar cube in a silver river. Yoshitaka Amano, best known for his character designs for Final Fantasy, is here with “Deva Loka,” a paean to fast cars and American comic strips. The Invisible Medium features other artists for a total of 12 works, most of which are landscapes only thinly connected by the theme, “invisible medium,” or the boundary between insanity and sensibility.
■ 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 May 26
Photo Courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Tokyo-based Chie Murakami hails from a commercial photography background, so she may know a thing or two about how makeup can mature a girl instantly. The Japanese Girls photo exhibition, which opens at the 1839 Little Gallery (1839小藝廊) tomorrow, is her candid look at the tension behind girls made up like women. For every photograph, girls were groomed and coiffed to look far more polished than their 3 to 11-year-old selves. Yet there is invariably something small in each image — maybe an unsure hand, or a pout around the mouth — that complicates the visual finish. Born in Aihi, Japan, Murakami is a freelance photographer who studied in Tokyo under Kouichi Kamio, a commercial photographer.
■ 1839 Little Gallery (1839小藝廊), B1, 120 Yanji St, Taipei City (台北市延吉街120號B1), tel: (02) 2778-8458. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until May 26
Photo Courtesy of TKG+
Digital artist Su Yu-hsien’s (蘇育賢) enters sensitive territory with Hua-shan-qiang (花山牆), his first Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊) exhibition. In Hua-shan-qiang, Su uses over 20 digital works to explore the realities people craft when things go badly. The exhibit centerpiece — a house furnished with a video installation — probes death, specifically that of a self-immolated man. As guests to the house follow him into the afterworld, they must also confront their own fears and imagined realities.
■ TKG+, 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
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 4:30pm. Until June 9
Photo Courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
Award-winning artist Chou Yu-cheng (周育正) gets nostalgic about his early days in Yi & C, a solo painting exhibition at the Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間). The Taipei-reared, Paris-trained Chou uses 12 pairs of paintings and a set called TEMCO to interrogate the relationship between private sponsors and art. Yi & C is about Chou himself, who as a fledgling artist once sold an entire studio of works in one go. “I can still remember to this day how I felt after returning to the studio ... [as] I turned to examine the first check I had received from selling works [on] my hands, a sense of sadness swelled up in me,” he said. But that’s not the end of Chou’s tale about artists and sponsors. Sometimes one agent lends the other meaning at Yi & C. Sometimes, their partnership itself becomes the artwork. Chou is winner of the 2012 Taipei Arts Awards and the 2011 Taishin Arts Awards.
■ 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 May 25
After 1949, the People’s Republic of China created People’s Parks, public spaces that were used for government-sponsored rallies and festivals. The 60-Minute Film: People’s Park (60分鐘影院:人民公園) is in Taipei until June 16, to tell how these little pieces of green became a nursery for the modern Chinese identity. The festival features four 60-minute video art works curated by Beijing’s Dong Bing-feng (董冰峰).
■ The Cube Project Space (立方計畫空間), 2F, 13, Alley 1, Ln 136, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段136巷1弄13號2樓), tel: (02) 2368-9418. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 2pm to 8pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 2pm. Until June 16
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