The Era Seen: The Pursuit of Images During the Days of the Photo Club (看見的時代-影會時期的影像追尋) is a show of rare photographs taken in Taiwan between 1940 and 1980. The large-scale exhibition of realist photographs brings together 135 photographers and nearly 500 pieces, many exhibited for the first time, and offering a glimpse of life in Taiwan as it underwent a major sociopolitical transition. The program includes two talks tomorrow by curator and photographer Chien Yung-pin (簡永彬).
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (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 Jan. 25
Photo courtesy of Tina Keng Gallery
Lin Yen-wei (林彥瑋) displays his photorealistic portraits of cheap animal statues at a solo exhibitionat Eslite Gallery. After snapping close-ups of animal heads and busts, he copies each photo with apainter’s brush. Animals — first domesticated from the wild, then turned into a statue, photographed and finally converted into a painting — appear in the frame as a grim reminder of what close encounters with civilization can do to nature.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388 X1588. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Dec. 7
Building Humane Worlds (築人間) is a retrospective for architect Han Pao-teh (漢寶德). Han’s designs include Academia Sinica’s Institute of Ethnology, Tainan National University of the Arts and the renowned South Garden of Hsinchu County. Through mixed media, the exhibition traces a sweeping career that was based on architecture, but which also included historical site preservation, establishing a science museum and 20 years of work in calligraphy.
■ 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
■ Until Nov. 30
Solo exhibition Mirrored Vignettes (小鏡覺) features the latest oil paintings by Yilan County native Lin Ju (林鉅). Scaling down from past works as large as 300cm by 200cm, Lin presents dainty pictures as small as 20cm by 30cm. One view is of a private patio garden, location and time unspecified; others are of simple but eerie combinations of animal bones. Each is a tiny portal that takes the viewer into a timeless and dreamlike state of mind.
■ 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 Dec. 31
Taiwanese Design Faces (設計師想的美) tells the story of five Taiwanese designers awarded the Red Dot, an international product and communication design prize based in Germany. Featured winners are Wang Yul-lin (王玉麟), Chris Huang (黃建偉), Chou Yu-jui (周育潤), Jacky Wu (吳東治) and Vii Chen (陳如薇), whose products range from surprising tableware to multifunctional boarding passes. The show documents the journey from product conception to completion, providing insight to the challenges and the future of Taiwanese design.
■ Red Dot Design Museum Taipei at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), 133 Guangfu S Rd, Taipei City (台北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2748-0430. Open Tuesday to Friday from 11:30am to 5:30pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closed on Mondays. Admission: NT$150
■ Until March 29
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located