Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Morikawa brings bleak images of Japan to After Party, a solo show of his work. Morikawa’s lens captures a variety of urban scenes that suggest both the presence and absence of the human subject, and the anonymity that comes from living in a heavily populated environment. Morikawa (b. 1984) is a Tokyo-based artist who won Japan’s Einstein Photo Competition last year.
■ 1839 Little Gallery (1839小藝廊), B1, 120 Yanji St, Taipei City (台北市延吉街120號B1), tel: (02) 2778-8458. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 2:30pm. Until July 21
Photo courtesy of cafe showroom and TIVAC
At Flora — the Dazzling World (花花:世界), 14 Taiwanese artists interpret the flower with watercolor, ink, oil paint, photography, sculpture, installation and mixed media. Artists include Yan Ming-huei (嚴明惠), whose flowers are a code for femininity, and Wu Tien-chang (吳天章), who uses the flower as an eye patch over traumatized subjects.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
■ Until Aug. 25
Photo courtesy of cafe showroom and TIVAC
Kao Ya-ting (高雅婷) is showing new sketches and oil paintings of humans clothed in swarms of bees at Honeycombs (蜂巢), a solo show named after a line in Walter Benjamin’s The Image of Proust. Benjamin, who was Marcel Proust’s German translator, once wrote that the latter’s thoughts are like bees that reshape the “honeycombs of memory.” Similarly, Kao’s bees give a new look to old faces and familiar human rites.
■ Cafe Showroom (場外空間), 462 Fujin St, Taipei City (台北市富錦街462號場外空間), tel: (02) 2760-1155. Open daily from 11am to 9pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until July 28
Origins and Developments of the Lingnan School of Painting (溯源與拓展─嶺南畫派特展) is a retrospective exhibition on a modern Chinese painting aesthetic that dates to the early 20th century. The Lingnan (嶺南) school is characterized by bright colors, receptiveness to Japanese techniques, realistic imitation of nature and a rejection of traditional Chinese art that emphasized imitating the ancients. Today, the aesthetic continues to have acolytes across Asia. The National Palace Museum is presenting 90 works in a survey that starts with Lingnan forerunner Ju Chao (居巢) and founders Gao Jianfu (高劍父), Gao Qifeng (高奇峰) and Chen Shuren (陳樹人). The show also includes second-generation artists such as Zhao Shao-ang (趙少昂), Guan Shanyue (關山月) and Yang Shanshen (楊善深).
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Aug. 25
Winning photographs of the 2012 Golden Shot Award (巨像獎) are on display until Sunday. Open to undergraduates nationwide, last year’s contest invited submissions that show the intricate variations in contemporary Taiwan. First place went to Willy Yang’s (楊昇浩) Come and Go (離去,歸來), right, a series of four images that depict women seemingly between life and death.
■ 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
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
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
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