As spring break pitters to a close, art galleries across Taipei are debuting a fresh batch of exhibitions. History and architectural buffs will enjoy Ii Peng’s (彭譯毅) solo exhibition at Galleria H. The exhibition’s title, Weakness (微弱), is a bit misleading because Peng’s artwork is actually quite uplifting. Influenced by the rapid construction of modern residential buildings in post-war Taiwan, Peng’s sculptures, made from wood, cement and natural materials, explores the idea of aesthetic transformation through a cycle of decay and collapse. The feeling one gleans when viewing his work is that of hope rising from the ashes.
■ Galleria H (恆畫廊), 12, Ln 58, Xinsheng S Rd, Taipei City (台北市新生南路一段58巷12-1號), tel: (02) 3322-2553. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 7pm
■ Until May 3
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Beijing-born Chinese artist Liu Wei (劉煒) has painted, photographed and sculpted everything from colorful skyscrapers and political pop portraits of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), to people’s butts. Known for having no distinct style, Wei’s latest exhibition, Liu Wei: Works on Paper (劉煒:Works on Paper), held at Taipei’s Lin & Lin Gallery, will showcase some of his tamer paintings done on paper. In these works, Liu combines Chinese brush painting with some modern elements. Instead of depicting mountainous landscapes, his subjects are more abstract with convoluted lines and hidden images — for example, a skeleton holding a bouquet of flowers set against an otherwise lovely backdrop.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 16 Dongfeng St, Taipei City (台北市東豐街16號), tel: (02) 2700-6866. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 3
Photo courtesy of Tina Keng Gallery
Romanian artist Catalin Petrisor’s grey, geometric paintings are currently on display at Mind Set Art Center. The Illusion of Depth (深度的幻象) alludes to a paradigm shift during the Renaissance, when the planar approach to drawing was replaced with a more three-dimensional one. At the time, the idea of creating the illusion of three-dimension on a two-dimensional canvas was mind-boggling. Petrisor seeks to break these steps down in his paintings, which look flat from certain angles and three-dimensional from other angles. The result is a solemn pensiveness which is minimalistic yet complicated at the same time.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術), 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 9
Photo courtesy of TKG+
The Quest for Mandala Episode I: Wanderers of the Abyssal Darkness (尋找曼荼羅.初回:黯黑的放浪者) is a solo exhibition by Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林). Held at Tina Keng Gallery, it examines the motif of voyage through eccentric bronze sculptures of sea creatures and other maritime symbols. Yang once said of himself: “My personality can be described as 50 percent deep-sea fish — eccentric and weird. Twenty percent gold fish, living in a glass bowl, ignorant and slow. And 30 percent tropical fish, flamboyant, longing for connection.” So while the sculptures may appear cute and comical, they are also a projection of Yang’s inner self.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 24
Known for his leather works and silk scarves for Hermes, artist Jam Wu (吳耿禎) puts a contemporary spin on Chinese paper cutting at Taipei’s Liang Gallery. The exhibition, entitled One Thousand And One Nights/ Nine Sea/ An Evening (一千零一夜九個海一片黃昏), has allusions to Arabian folklore. Although paper cutting is normally associated with folk culture, Wu uses red paper to cut out silhouettes of sensuous women and sexy sirens. His paper cutting shows how the past is not lost. It just needs to be refashioned in order to be remembered.
■ Liang Gallery (尊彩藝術中心), 366 Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路366號), (02) 2797-1100. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 29
Perception and time are popular motifs in modern photography and they feature prominently in Re-turning Sight — The Fissures of Moving Image (迴光線-影像的裂隙), a joint exhibition at TKG+ consisting of stills from videos produced by visual artists Hou I-ting (侯怡亭), Lin Guan-ming (林冠名), Niu Chun-chiang (牛俊強), Tseng Yu-chin (曾御欽) and Wu I-yeh (吳宜曄). Each artist has a different way of portraying time through their camera lens. Whereas past and present are overlaid in some, it is split and ruptured in others. Not only is it difficult to gauge the entire story being told in one simple still, but what the image means to each viewer is also inevitably different.
■ TKG+, B1, Ln 548, 15 Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798, open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 28
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
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Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s