Yu Cheng-ta (余政達) uncovers realities of the art world at solo film show Practicing Live. His titular video stars real-life professionals in the art industry: an artist, a Japanese collector, a critic, the director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and others who were asked to play a version of themselves. In a film that starts with a benign family celebration, these characters present the complicated dynamics of the industry and the conditions of production that today’s artists face.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Sept. 21
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
Using black ink and a small bamboo brush, Hong Kong’s Winnie Mak (麥翠影) makes elegant and hyper-detailed illustrations of flowers, trees and landscapes, currently on view at a solo show called Lines and Beyond.
■ A Gallery (一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號), tel: (02) 2702-3327. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until Sept. 13
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
Marie Laurencin is a large-scale retrospective featuring the 20th-century Parisian painter. About 100 pieces on loan from Japan’s Musee Marie Laurencin are on view. After a brief career in Cubism, Laurencin developed a soft and delicate technique that embraced pink and made her a popular portraitist among prominent contemporaries like Coco Chanel.
■ Zhong Zheng Art Gallery (中正藝廊) at National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, tel: (02) 2343-1100. Daily from 9am to 6pm. Admission: NT$250
■ Until Oct. 12
Hope Has A Place (靈光‧山水) is a meticulously designed solo exhibition by South Korean ink wash artist Purume Hong. Hong received her MFA from National Taiwan Normal University and obtained her PhD in art therapy in South Korea. In this show, Hong frames her monochrome ink landscapes with light and shadow, sounds, natural fragrance and other sensory signals to create a space of contemplation for viewers.
■ 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
■ Until Sept. 7
Synesthesia (聯覺) is a group show by three artists that tries to awaken a temporary synesthesia, a rare neuro-physical condition that causes a person to make extraordinary connections between senses, for example hearing a sound in reaction to seeing a color. Japanese oil painter Soya Asae portrays water vapor, striving to evoke not just visual appearance but its temperature, humidity, odor and sound. Liang Gu (顧亮) from China issues dainty watercolors of pens and a spoon to bring a Zen calm to viewers, while Kumi Machida stacks thin lines to set off the audience’s feelings of tension and alienation.
■ 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 August 24
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