Yeh Liu Chin-hsiung (葉劉金雄) makes remarkable artisan teapots, which are currently on view at The Heartfelt Teapots from Hsin-Wu Pottery House (心塢陶風). The studio is best known for its Withered Wood series (枯木系列), which feature “decayed” faux-wood surfaces realized with ceramics. The surfaces are pitted to mimic the effects of wind and rain, and the pots are fitted with operational handles and a spout. Born in Taoyuan County in 1945, Yeh Liu (葉劉) studied carving and painting at the National Academy of Arts and is recipient of the 2003 National Craft Award (國家工藝獎) for best ceramic work.
■ 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 Sept. 3
Photo courtesy of NTMFA
Dialogue among Bamboos (話竹) is a distinctly personal show, an artist’s tribute to her late grandmother. As a girl, Mia Wen-hsuan Liu (劉文瑄) lived with her grandmother, who loved traditional ink painting and pored over the works of the masters. “When I was a child there was a room specifically for my grandmother to work on her Chinese ink painting,” Liu writes in the gallery notes. “However … I hated ink painting so much when I was in high school.” As an adult and as an established painter, Liu returned to her grandmother’s faded ink paintings of bamboo fields with a pencil, adding texture and restoring colors that had been lost. The result is subtle iterations of ink and pencil lines on faded pages, an impressionist yet realist map tracking the passage of time.
■ Absolute Art Space (絕對空間), 11, Minsheng Rd Sec 1, Greater Tainan (台南市民生路一段205巷11號), tel: (06) 223-3508, open from Tuesdays to Fridays 12pm to 8pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm to 8pm
■ Until July 20
Photo courtesy of Absolute Art Gallery
The National Art Exhibition (全國美術展) surveys last year’s best works of ink, calligraphy, seal-cutting, gouache, oil paintings, watercolors, prints, sculpture, photography and new media art, a total of 168 pieces chosen from 1,124 entries. Among them is Lin Hsing-an’s (林倖安) Five Desires: Hunger (五欲─食), an ink composition based on the daily changes of a spiderweb. Gold in the oil painting category went to Ho Huey-chih (賀蕙芝) for Joseph’s Dreams and the Storehouses (約瑟的夢與糧倉), about the Biblical story of Joseph. In Genesis, Joseph predicted that Egypt would be afflicted with famine and filled up a storehouse with grain for the future. In a luxuriantly detailed adaptation of the storehouse, the artist depicts what’s on the menu of Taiwan’s future: a case of Taiwan Beer, Chinese currencyu and a dollar bill, which make up coordinates of a tight triangle inscribing a bowl of sweet potatoes.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMFA, 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
■ Until Aug. 24
Photo courtesy of National Museum of History
A World Achieved (達境) is a solo show featuring American artist Li-lan Gee, daughter of the famed gallerist Helen Wimmer Gee and Asian-American modernist pioneer Yun Gee. The younger Gee developed a flexible and sensuous approach to geography, bringing together far-flung physical landmarks to create the condition of being in many places at once. The showcase features 23 pieces dating from 1970s to this year, including early experimentation with paper mail: collages of enigmatic stamps from nowhere and envelopes postmarked from far away. Gee also creates oil paintings on linen — minimalist landscapes of European architecture (populated with Japanese folk monsters) and a tiny East Asian courtyard with an outsized non-native insect. In each frame, Gee leaves wide sections of white space that imply a longing for distance from the world.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until July 27
Home is the subject of Homeland: Edge of Desolation (門外家園:荒蕪的邊緣), a collection of 34 installations and mixed-media installations by Hwang Buh-ching’s (黃步青). Some are based on Hwang’s boyhood memories of the ocean, others on the decline of humanist values in contemporary Taiwan. In a themed gallery titled Caring for the Environment, idiosyncratic mixed-media are an ode to wildlife in the deteriorating ecosystem. Born in 1948 in Lukang (鹿港), Hwang was trained at the University of Paris St. Denis and represented Taiwan at the 1999 Venice Biennale.
■ 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. General admission: NT$50
■ Until Aug. 24
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