Jeju Teddy Bear Museum (韓國濟州泰迪熊特展), an offbeat crowd-puller based in South Korea, is in Taipei for the first time on a world tour. It’s considered the largest collection of its kind, featuring costumed teddies framed in historic events and popular bears from around the world, like the UK’s Paddington Bear and American Care Bears. For the lovers of glamor among teddy aficionados, the museum has delights like extra-special Steiff heirlooms with silk and mohair for fur, a 24-carat gold nose and twinkling blue sapphires for eyes.
■ Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), 133, Guangfu S Rd, Taipei (台北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2765-1388, open daily from 10am to 6pm, regular admission: NT$280
■ Until April 20
Photo Courtesy of NTMOFA
Lee Chen-cheng (李鎮成) is a leading Taiwanese calligrapher famous for mastering the flying white (飛白書法) technique, in which he maneuvers a relatively dry brush tip so that its thin hairs separate and allow white blank space within each black brushstroke. At his solo show Expression of Lines (線相), Lee is showing his latest calligraphy in this classic style, as well as pieces from a more experimental collection. These are “three-dimensional calligraphy” — steel, stone or copper sculptures that express the form and meaning of traditional Chinese characters.
■ Gallery 201, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMOFA, 國立臺灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市西區五權西路一段2號) tel: (04) 2372-3552, open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until April 27
Photo Courtesy of KMFA
With My , Trade Your: Part II is a group show that documents an art swap by current artists-in-residence of Taipei Artists Village. At the gallery, each participant exchanges a work of art with a peer. Each also offers a written explanation that makes a case for the desired trade, stating what the other artist’s work means to them and what their work can offer in return. The show is a record of one artist’s simple appreciation for another’s, as well as of the complexities involved when one artist appraises his contemporaries for value.
■ Barry Room (百里廳), Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until March 9
Photo Courtesy of Kuang Hong Arts
Man Ray, currently on view at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, displays 156 works by Emmanuel Radnitzky, aka Man Ray, an American oil painter and avant-garde photographer. Born in 1890 in Pennsylvania, Man Ray came of age professionally in France, where he earned acclaim as a photographer and produced portraits for local luminaries including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Salvador Dali. As a photographer, he adopted the fantastical aesthetics of the Dadaists and Surrealists, favoring darkroom techniques like solarization — overexposing the negative in the camera so dark areas appear light, and what should be light appears dark. Man Ray also pioneered a method of photography that art critic Tristan Tzara dubbed “rayograms.” In this method, he placed eggs, thumb tacks and other objects on photosensitive paper and gradually exposed them to light, creating “camera-less” photos with a dreamlike and impressionistic quality.
■ Galleries 101-103 at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA, 高雄市立美術館), 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Until May 25
Outline (廓) is the solo debut of young installation artist Hsu Chiao-yen (許喬彥). Using objects like charcoal, cardboard boxes and plastic bags, Hsu brings abstractions into the spatial dimension, abstractions like the concept of “illegal space” or his own memories. In The Molding Room (塑室), he reproduces the estrangement and familiarity he simultaneously feels for his home. Born 1990 in Chiayi, Hsu received honorable mention in the 2012 New Taipei City Rising Artist Awards (新北市創作新人獎) and was nominated for the Taoyuan County Creation Award (桃源創作獎) last year.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei (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 March 16
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern