3D Printing (未來正在成型) is Taiwan’s first exhibition for designers who have embraced the technology. The group exhibition features 21 works realized with 3D printers, such as Chou Yu-jun’s (周育潤) giraffe sculpture, and a pen lodged in a tiny ornate cage by Tong Ho (何忠堂 ) and Rock Wang (王俊隆). Fons Sweegers and Lilian van Stekelenburg are here with Kitchen Hack, a 3D-printed apparatus that makes yarn when you run the flour mixer.
■ Taiwan Design Museum (台灣設計館), 133 Guangfu S Rd, Taipei City (臺北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2745-8199 X 370. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm. Regular admission: NT$50
■ Until Oct. 13
Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Design Museum
Acclaimed artisan Lin Guo-shinn (林國信) presents 33 sets of silver teapots and other metalwork at a solo exhibition Ripples on Water (水的線條). His teapots range from exquisite to charming with handles that curl out like a tail. Lin, who has worked with metal for 25 years, specializes in decorative finishing. Using burl metal — an alloy of bronze and silver — he creates intricate patterns that match the look of natural wood, flames and the water ripples of the exhibition title.
■ National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (NTCRI), Taipei exhibition center (臺北當代工藝設計分館), 9F, 20 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (臺北市南海路20號9樓), tel: (02) 2356-3879. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Sept. 8
Photo Courtesy of National Museum of history
HOME. LAND II : Do You Know My Name? (吾鄉、吾土系列二 : 你甘知影阮的名) is a solo exhibition about weeds. When Chen Chien-pei (陳建北) visited the Taipei Botanical Garden last year, he noticed tufts of grass and flowers flourishing in neglect and resolved to document them. His efforts include interviews with botanists, poems and photographs of plants taken from various angles. For Chen, the weeds are an extended metaphor for Taiwanese identity. In the showcase, he explores the growing cultural chasm between the older and younger generations.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: Free.
■ Opens today. Until Sept. 29
Photo Courtesy of NTCRDI
Interlocked (連鎖) is a South Korean photographer’s take on Taipei and what seems peculiar to it. Woojin Chang presents images of unusual parts of skyline, space — particularly scarcity of space between one building and the next — and the maze of AC units, electrical wires and pipes fitted in proximity in public spaces. Images are edited, with blocks of city imprinted over others, in accordance with Chang’s impression of the city. “I took great care to maintain and even enhance the feel of Taipei as I have felt it, while at the same time adding extra elements to augment the whimsical nature of the fictitious cityscape,” writes Chang in his gallery notes.
■ Treasure Hill Artist Village, Cross Gallery (寶藏巖國際藝術村十字藝廊), 2, Aly 14, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷14弄2號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until Sunday
Turkish painter Devrim Erbil brings panoramic scenes from his home country to Taiwan’s National Museum of History. The solo exhibition, Poetic Abstraction: from Istanbul (詩意的抽象─來自伊斯坦堡), provides a bird’s-eye view of Instanbul rendered in Erbil’s famously delicate lines and carpet-art motifs. Erbil was born in 1937 in Turkey’s carpet-weaving province of Usak and then trained in Istanbul, Paris and London. He was elected Turkey’s “Young Artist of the Year” in 1968, and awarded the prestigious State Artist title in 1991.
■ 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 Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until Oct. 2
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
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