Tsai Shih-hung (蔡士弘) treats his canvas like a computer screen, copying and pasting avatars to populate a tech-smart and slightly menacing world. The results are on show at Magic Hour (加減乘除), a group exhibition of five pop artists. Jang Tarng-kuh (張堂庫), whose oeuvre shows a predilection for cats, is returning to the gallery with more puffy house pets brushed onto the canvas to seem more realistic than photographs. Zeng Ching-shi (曾慶熙) brings ape-men whose faces are foreign but relatable.
■ 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 July 7
Photo courtesy of Wang Pei-shuan
Taiwan’s largest group of military dependents’ villages is on the way to extinction. In February 2009, Lulu Shur-tzy Hou (侯淑姿) photographed residents in three Zuoying District villages, two of which are now gone. Thirty-two of her photos are displayed at Here Is Where We Meet (我們在此相遇—2013侯淑姿個展). In a departure from previous works, Hou includes words from her photographed subjects in each image, as a gentle criticism of legislature’s so-called rebuilding policies that are aimed instead at demolition.
■ Main Trend Gallery (大趨勢畫廊), 209-1, Chengder Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (臺北市大同區承德路三段209-1號), tel: (02) 2587-3412. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 6
Photo courtesy of Main Trend Gallery
Aihua Hsia (夏愛華) uses traditional Japanese lacquer to make fantastical forest creatures in A Convalescence Realm — Solo Exhibition of Aihua Hsia (癒之境:夏愛華個展), her first solo show. The sculptures are based on real animals in Japan, where Hsia recuperated after a wearying artist-in-residency in New York. In the gallery notes, Hsia says she forgot the trials of New York after wandering into an ancient Japanese forest full of rare animals, like a bright-orange frog the size of her hand. “I hope to give contemporary society a healing space, too,” she writes.
■ MOT/Arts, 3F, 22, Fuxing S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市復興南路一段22號3樓), tel: (02) 2751-8088. Open daily from 11:30am to 8pm
■ Until July 6
Late Catalan painter Joan Miro is known for works that reject every school of painting that he encountered, including Surrealism, a category in which he’s often classed. Instead, Miro uses his own idiosyncratic color palette and visual terms — loaded symbols like woman, bird and star — to escape what he saw as the cultural repression in Barcelona under Francisco Franco’s regime. Over 85 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and lithographs completed between 1960 and 1980 are on show in Taiwan for the first time at Joan Miro: Women, Birds, Stars. During these final two decades of Miro’s career, women, birds and stars had become the major motifs of his artistic expression.
■ 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 Mondays to Sundays from 9am to 6pm. General admission: NT$250
■ Until Sept. 25
Wang Pei-hsuan (王珮瑄) is showing her paintings of strays in Pieces of Spaces: Solo Exhibition of Pei Hsuan Wang (王珮瑄創作個展). A portion of sales profits will go to Taiwan Animal S.O.S., a Taipei-based rescue group that supplied some of the live models.
■ Wenshui Arts and Cultural Center (文水藝文中心), 7F, 11, Nanjing E Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (北市中山區南京東路二段11號7F), tel: (02) 2563-4568 . Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until June 28
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
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