Painter Hua Chien-chiang (華建強) works with gouache, a modified watercolor paint that’s opaque on the canvass. Gun & Suit (槍砲與西裝), his latest solo show, is six recent series that censure ways military might and government power are used in everyday life. In his paintings, the icon of the politician’s suit is just as dark as the gun. In his series Incisive Intent (犀利人心), tuxedoed men ride a bulldozer like it’s a tank. In Small Circle (小圈圈), humans are depicted as social creatures who seemingly can’t resist forming groups and maintaining the shape of those groups at gunpoint.
■ 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 Feb. 2
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
Tokyo Island (東京島) is a solo show featuring large photos of miniature urban scenes. Shingo Suzuki measured hundreds of real objects to create tiny models to scale. Then he assembled the pieces in detailed scenes — of a shopping mall, a subway interior and other parts of “Tokyo” — that are destroyed after he photographs them. The results are time capsules of the city he sees: unconnected spaces that are perfectly clean, devoid of people and remote.
■ 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
■ Until Dec. 29
Photo courtesy of 1839 Little Gallery
Glorious Encounter (華麗的相會) is the latest of Metaphysical Art Gallery’s group shows for regional contemporary artists. On view are 14 pop artists from Taiwan, Japan and Korea with their colorful acrylic paintings of “adventure merging real and virtual,” according to the gallery notes. The show includes a handful of pieces in other media, such as a reconstructed half-Chinese, half-western vase by Yee Sookyung and Eddie Kang’s rag doll who sails through a sky-scape filled with turtles.
■ 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 Jan. 14
A Traveling Exhibition for Small Woodenware Creation (遊木民族-小木器巡迴特) brings together top Taiwanese contemporary carpenters. Over 20 artisan studios such as Smangus(意念工房)and Lo-lo Wood (樂樂木) present small ware such as lamps, clocks and toys like a pinball machine and rocking horse. The exhibition includes a series of woodcarving workshops and competitions. For more information, visit www2.ntcri.gov.tw/2013woodenware (Chinese only).
■ National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (國立臺灣工藝研究發展中心), 573 Zhongzheng Rd, Nantou County (南投縣中正路573號), tel:(049) 233-4141, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until April 2
At Into Spotlight (亮相), ceramicist Lo Sen-hao (羅森豪) shows 50 of his modern tenmoku bowls (天目碗) that bear his signature dark glaze of local grasses, clay ashes and iron tempered at extremely high heat. Tenmoku, or iron glaze, was once popular for bowls used for tea in the Tang and Song dynasties. Later, the method was revived by monks in Japan and now forms part of traditional Japanese tea culture. Lo, an artist and professor at National Taipei University of Education, is known for a glaze that gives the bowl minute patterns and a rich luster that changes color when the piece is tilted.
■ National Museum of History, 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 Jan. 12
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not