China’s Hua Qing (華慶) makes the Chinese Zodiac seem like the animals next door. In The Twelve Faces of Humankind (人的十二個面貌), a solo show of oil paintings and wood prints, Hua roughly strips the twelve creatures of their mythology. The dragon is no longer a dragon, but a dinosaur that once roamed the earth, and the lyrical rooster is replaced with a wrinkled turkey. Each animal is fitted with a pair of human eyes, so that the horse seems to wink, while the rat, carrying its offspring, looks out with a gaze that’s faintly accusatory.
■ Asia Art Center II (亞洲藝術中心二館), 93, Lequn 2nd Road, Taipei City (台北市樂群二路93號), tel: (02) 8502-7939. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6:30pm
■ Until Sunday
Photo courtesy of Asia Art Center
Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣) isn’t sure there is a happy future ahead of Taiwan. In solo exhibition A Better Future: “Home, Sweet Home” (“甜蜜家庭” 黃海欣個展) , she brings some 50 paintings of contemporary life that are as humorous as they are horrifying. In one, first-aid instructions are displayed in a restaurant; in another, a girl plays violin for her father, who reads a newspaper in front of a TV. Huang (b. 1984) received a Taishin Arts Award last year and the Taipei Arts Award in 2011.
■ 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 7pm
■ Until June 30
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
The Edge of Darkness — Solo Exhibition by Lo Chan-Peng (黑的邊緣 — 羅展鵬個展) offers a simulation of going to the movies. Pop artist Lo Chan-peng (羅展鵬), who hails from the so-called Strawberry Generation, is showing his latest portraits of ashen young people who seem to cry under the gaze. Just as the audience in a movie theater can become wholly immersed in the big screen, Lo’s subjects compel viewers to look harder and to forget all about themselves in the darkness.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Until June 30
Shinji Ohmaki uses Taiwan’s endangered flowers in Tree of Life-form/Substance, a solo show in Taipei. In an extension of his Echoes-Infinity series, Ohmaki paints Taiwan’s rarest flowers on local textiles, creating a giant carpet that blooms with kaleidoscopic spots. Viewers are invited to tread on the paint blossoms, which bleed into the carpet and gradually blur in a playful metaphor for the contact between civilization and nature. In another room, Ohmaki uses real oak branches, powder paintings and images of trees to explore themes from Adam and Eve’s Fall in the Garden of Eden.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術), 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Tuesdays to Sunday 2pm to 6pm
■ Opening reception on Sunday from 3:30pm to 6:30pm. Until August 18
Local eighth graders bring art projects to the MOCA Studio Underground in Howdy? Goody-goody! Flash mob! (怪怪?乖乖! 快閃!!). This exhibit gets its exclamation-pointed title from an actual flash mob routine, one of four projects that students produced with a little help from artist Ye Yu-jun (葉育君). You won’t get flash mobbed at the gallery, but all of the students’ inanimate works are there: colorful cardboard box masks, restyled school uniforms and images of Jan Cheng Junior High School (建成國中) that are reconstructed into fun and surreal postcards. Ye, a Paris-trained artist who works mainly with video installation, sound and performance art, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館)to teach public-school students and help them develop art projects over eight weeks.
■ MOCA Studio Underground (地下實驗), Zhongshan Metro Mall B30/32/34, near Exit R9 (捷運中山地下街,近R9出口), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Free admission
■ Until July 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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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