Three new artists cross paths in First Shot — Taiwan Potential Photographers Group Exhibition (新.影 台灣潛力新銳攝影聯展) at the Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC). Ta-ching Liu (劉大慶) is here with Corn (玉米) — dreamlike stills of bugs crawling on corn — while his contemporary Wade Chang (張維智) has populous panoramas of modern life in Era of Uncertainty (搖晃年代). Yu-chi Li (李毓琪) is showing Goodbye, God of Land (再見, 地基主), her compilation of black-and-white negatives featuring pie-faced twins standing by old architecture, as a kind of requiem to the casualties of urban renewal. Another exhibition at TIVAC, Landscapes of My Memory (記憶中的風景), is a photo catalog of one man’s budget trips around the world. Technique is what sets this showcase apart from the average scrapbook. Kao Chih-chuan (高志尊) uses time-consuming yesteryear processes like cyanotype, albumen printing and gum bichromate to strike painterly tones hard to find in the digital print. On show are landscapes and portraits, such as a set on teenaged cosplayers — poignant works-in-progress who put on a sophisticated face for the camera.
■ Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC — 台灣國際視覺藝術中心), 16, Alley 52, Ln 12, 16 Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市松山區八德路三段12巷52弄16號), tel: (02) 2577-1781. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:30am to 7pm
■ Until Sunday
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
There is a palatable, almost pop quality to the 11th Taishin Arts Awards Exhibition, a collection of highlights from 15 visual and performance works that premiered in Taiwan last year. Creative Society’s Playing the Violin (拉提琴) is a mainstream black comedy about the Taiwanese Everyman, and Chen Chin-pao’s (陳敬寶) Circumgyration: A Quartet (迴返計劃:四部曲) forces the eye to retrieve collective memories of the primary-school experience. Also on show are a homoerotic ballet by Horse Dance Theatre, an original composition by the National Symphony Orchestra and Huang Yi’s (黃翊) physical duet between himself and an industrial robot.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until June 23
Photo courtesy of Jason Mak
Treasure Hill is showing Cycles of Rainbows (彩虹是圓的), a large-scale art installation that tells a story. Pieces that serve as storyboards are built around a centerpiece — the so-called bicycle of rainbows, which visitors are asked to ride as part of the gallery experience. This kinetic element is a signature of creator Wandering Cloud (行雲朵朵), a three-person art group that tries to pique active participation from viewers with animation art.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village, Cross Gallery (寶藏巖國際藝術村十字藝廊), 49, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷49號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 3pm to 6pm
■ Until May 12
Photo Courtesy of TIVAC
Collectors can meet artists at Art Revolution Taipei (台北新藝術博覽), an art fair that includes paintings, prints and other contemporary art pieces. New to the 2013 edition is a thematic stress on “transmutation” (蛻變): Participants must show at least one work in a medium or subject outside their repertoire, and 20 percent of the floor space is marked off for avant-garde and academic art. Returning events include a celebrity charity benefit and a juried painting competition, which has received 2,462 submissions from 50 countries.
■ Art Revolution Taipei, Taipei World Trade Center Hall 3 (台北世貿三館), 6 Songshou Rd, Taipei City (松壽路六號), tel: (02) 7743-7788. Open from noon to 8pm. Admission: NT$100
■ Today, tomorrow, Sunday and Monday
Jason Mak’s Chinese Calligraphy Exhibition features 40 works inspired by Taiwan’s cities and counties — from Yunlin to Kinmen. The works avoid simple traditional scripts, applying modern approaches and variations to the ancient art of calligraphy. Mak’s calligraphy exhibition is the first in southern Taiwan to spotlight an expatriate. Hailing from Alberta, Canada, Mak has studied Chinese calligraphy in Taiwan for over a decade under master Shi Wang-chen (石忘塵).
■ Pingtung City Hall (屏東市公所), 2F, 61 Taitang St, Pingtung City (屏東市台糖街61號), tel: (08) 755-7688. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until June 18
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