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
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and