Insportsration (動見) examines the politics of sport using 21 mixed media pieces by Australian, Indian and Taiwanese artists. Yu Cheng-ta (余政達), winner of last year’s Beacon Prize at Art Fair Tokyo, satirizes the relationship between business and sport with Tennis Players: two perfectly coifed Caucasian players in a publicity photo resembling a toothpaste advertisement. Chen Ching-yao (陳擎耀) thinks about sport as a tool for programming bodies. His International Radio Exercise Taiwan Version are single-channel videos in which grown men dance, reflexively and almost helplessly, to the morning exercise medley they were taught long ago in the public school system.
■ 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 Aug. 16
Photo Courtesy of lin & lin gallery
Sharing Memories & Connecting Generations (串聯世代的生活記憶) is a nostalgic walk down memory lane via cartoons and museum pieces. Greater Tainan’s National Museum of Taiwan History displays toys, bikes and other long-gone objects from the daily life of yesteryear alongside watercolor illustrations by Liu Hsing-chin (劉興欽), the award-winning creator of cartoon Brother A-san and Great Auntie (阿三哥與大嬸婆). Born in 1934, Liu grew up in a small Hsinchu village during Taiwan’s first economic boom.
■ National Museum of Taiwan History (臺灣歷史博物館), 250, Changhe Rd Sec 1, Greater Tainan (台南市長和路一段250號),tel: (06) 356-8889, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm, closed on Mondays
■ Until Sept. 1
Photo Courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
Painter Hsiao Chin (蕭勤) was born in Shanghai, grew up in Taiwan and is a prime mover in Asia’s modern art movement. In the solo show, Great All (大能), he presents his latest work that contemplates the end of life. Lashings of blank space are the most prominent feature, followed by blue blocks and delicate spots that make up a kind of star trail. Lines gradually vanish and appear again, and seem just about to stretch beyond the confines of the canvas.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 16 Dongfeng St, Taipei City, (台北市東豐街16號), tel: (02) 2700-6866. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 28
The 2013 Yilan International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival (宜蘭國際童玩藝術節) is a 51-day event with workshops, water park games, performances and exhibitions for children. This year’s exhibitions include a solo show for one of Taiwan’s leading children’s book illustrators. Play, Turn: Artist Jimmy’s Gallery of Children’s Picture Books, recreates scenes from Jimmy Liao’s (幾米) books using giant props and character pieces. Children can meet the tiny monster under the bed in The Monster Who Ate Darkness (吃掉黑暗的怪獸), or try out different jobs and their equipment just like the protagonist in I Can Be Anything! (我會做任何事!). Other exhibitions at the children’s festival are Folk Game Museum, a playable collection of Taiwanese games, and Surprise for Age 18 at River Bank, featuring 18 student art pieces that interpret the Yilan folk song Diu Diu Dong (丟丟銅).
■ Dongshan River Water Park (冬山河親水公園), 2, Qinhe Rd Sec 2, Yilan County (宜蘭縣五結鄉親河路2段2號), tel: (03) 9600-322, open daily from 9am to 7pm. Admission: NT$250 weekdays, NT$300 on weekends
■ Until Aug. 25
Using ballpoint pens, Tzeng Yong-ning (曾雍甯) renders spores, cell nuclei and strange flora with microscopic precision. As the eye moves, the visual focus of the works appears to jump, so that Tzeng’s two-dimensional canvases come alive. Works on display now at solo show Into the Color Density (凝彩斑斕) have also been exhibited in New York, Rome and Hungary.
■ Accton Art Gallery (智邦藝術館), Yanxin 3rd Rd Sec 1, Hsinchu City (新竹市研新三路一號), tel: (03) 5770-270 ext. 1907, open Mondays to Fridays 10am to 6:30pm, Closed on weekends
■ Until Aug. 25
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
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would