The 32nd Young Designers’ Exhibition (YODEX, 新一代設計展) opens today with original fashion, art and advertising, industrial, digital media and interior designs by local students. YODEX, which serves as a recruitment platform, is built around a juried competition. Among the 59 contenders is National Taipei University of Technology’s Department of Industrial Design, whose entries include an office chair that pulls out so you can nap face-down, and Flapping Ears (愛犬電動速克達), a contoured scooter that gives your pet a comfortable ride and a great view. Tatung University, another exhibitor with a strong record, has toys like the Walkabout, a mobile-phone powered device that’s pushed out from the waterfront to pick up trash a swimmer can’t reach.
■ Taipei World Trade Center Hall 1 and Hall 3, 5, Xinyi Rd Sec 5 (北市信義路五段5號) and 6 Songshou Rd (松壽路六號); tel: (02) 2745-8199 ext. 581. General admission: NT$200
■ Until Monday
Photo courtesy of KdMoFA
Chinese painter Su Xioabai (蘇笑柏) manages conflict with a light touch at Grand Immensity — the Art of Xiaobai Su (大境-蘇笑柏藝術展), his painting and installation exhibition at Taichung’s National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung (國立台灣美術館). Su, who trained at Germany’s prestigious Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, has developed a visual language that blends Occidental and Chinese aesthetics. He treats the canvas with big shimmery blocks of color like the western expressionists do, but applies classic Eastern iconography and Chinese mediums like lacquer to give his paintings a peculiar luster. Su eschews the symbols of nation, preferring to let his works surpass difference.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wuquan 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 July 21
Photo courtesy of National Taipei University of Technology
The National Museum of History is showing 203 paintings and calligraphy works of artist Pu Xinyu (溥心畬), 50 years after his death. Pu, cousin to China’s last emperor Pu Yi (溥儀), won acclaim during the Qing Dynasty for perfecting the trifecta of Chinese arts: poetry, calligraphy and painting. After fleeing to Taiwan in the same year as Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Pu taught at National Taiwan Normal University and continued his work at a studio in Taipei until his death in 1963. The Scholar-Recluse: Painting and Calligraphy by Pu Xinyu (逸筆儒風:溥心畬書畫展) includes calligraphy — Pu excelled at running and clerical script — and classical paintings of nearly every genre: landscapes, birds-and-flowers and subject paintings featuring the mythological Zhong Kuo (鍾馗), an exorcist who wards off demons during the Dragon Boat Festival.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until June 23
Photo courtesy of the National Museum of History
An Ode to Printmaking: A Retrospective (周瑛印紀) surveys the late printmaker Chou Ying (周瑛), who cofounded the Taiwan Society of Printmaking in 1970. Chou began his career with classic woodcut prints that rendered country folk in refined and realistic lines. After 1950, he branched out into other mediums such as cane-fiber boards, paper and finally stone. Chou’s Ode to Stone, a series on display at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (KdMoFA, 關渡美術館), was created by an innovative rubbing — not carving — technique that makes the cold stones exude warmth and light on prints.
Kuandu, a nine-gallery museum, is also showing works by contemporary artist Hsieh Li-fa (謝里法). Hsieh is a main driver of Taiwan’s postwar art scene, and has worked primarily in art criticism and oil painting. In his early years, he was also a prolific printmaker. Old Plates New Prints — A Solo Exhibition by Hsieh Lifa (舊版新印-謝里法版畫作品展) presents a decade of his early printing work, dating from school days in Paris to his New York City apprenticeship in 1974. The prints are linocuts and zincographs that remark on and sometimes deconstruct local art trends, as well as document Hsieh’s own evolution as an artist.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (KdMoFA, 關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 ext 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until July 14
Sixty-one galleries from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and China bring contemporary pieces to the fifth annual Young Art Taipei 2013, a fair that shows artists under the age of 45.
■ Sheraton Taipei Hotel, F9, 12, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 1, Zhongzheng Dist, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路一段12號守九樓). Open today from 2pm to 10pm, tomorrow and Sunday from 12pm to 8pm. Admission: NT$250
■ Opening reception today at 8pm. Until Sunday
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
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
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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