Yao Jui-chung (姚瑞中) wears many hats: curator, fine arts professor, critic, theater buff. He’s a graffiti artist, too, the one behind an R-rated mural captioned Taiwanese that made local headlines in 2011. In the solo exhibition Something Blue (小幻影), Yao adds photography to the list, presenting 35 hand-developed images of Taiwan he took between 1992 and 2012. The set is about the desolation and shiftlessness of society, a theme that loosely connects Yao’s eclectic oeuvre. Also at the exhibition are personal and professional notes that offer rare context into the artist’s work.
■ TKG+ Projects Taipei, B1, Ln 548, 15 Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市內湖區瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798, open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Oct. 20
Photo courtesy of Tina Keng Gallery
To Dream in Flowery Bowers: 2013 Flower Arrangement Exhibition (花鄉逐夢—2013中華插花藝術展) is an annual show of classic Chinese flower arrangements, co-organized since 1984 by the Chinese Women Orchid Art Association and the Chinese Floral Arts Foundation. This year, artists were challenged to make floral art that does not use pots, an unorthodox restriction that leaves the flowers without their usual repository for water.
■ 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
■ Opens today. Until Oct. 27
Photo courtesy of National Museum of History
Japanese silkscreen artist Mitsuo Kim brings two series, Laokoon Group Sculptures and row, to the solo exhibition SWTICH. In a departure from classic serigraphy, he uses paraffin wax to whip up what is otherwise a two-dimensional image.
■ 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
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until Oct. 27
Enchanting Bridges of the World (千橋百媚) is the winners’ gallery for Yang Ming Cultural Foundation’s contest on photos depicting scenes or cultures of bridges. Panelists chose 120 photos of classic bridges out of about 4,000 submissions. Top prize in Bridges of the World category went to Chen Pei-ru’s (陳姵如) work on London’s Tower Bridge. In the Bridges of Taiwan category, the gold went to the Xindian Creek (新店溪) and New Taipei Bridge (新北大橋) by Huang Hsiao-si (黃孝思).
■ Cai Yu Art Gallery (采玉藝廊), National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念堂), tel: (02) 2343-1100, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow at 2pm. Until Oct. 31
Interpretation between Virtual and Reality (虛實演繹) is a solo exhibition by Huang Chin-hua (黃錦華), an ink painter who says stones are the mainspring of her creativity. Some of her works, like Big Stone, are literal stones that are first outlined with sharp strokes and then painted over gently until it’s smooth and mossy — a metaphor for how real stones come to be. Other paintings appear to be more fanciful interpretations of the stone: Self Portrait is a floating island that, like the stone, attempts to “condense the universe into one single object,” as Huang writes in the gallery notes.
■ Kalos Gallery (真善美畫廊), 269, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段269號), tel: (02) 2836-3452. Open daily from 10am to 6:30pm, closed Sundays
■ Until Oct. 26
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