The Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts is currently exhibiting Flamboyant Mobile Interactive — Formosa Wall Painting Group (赤燄 ‧ 游擊 ‧ 藝術交陪 — 新台灣壁畫隊). Featuring works by the Formosa Wall Painting Group, an art collective formed to make art more accessible and relatable to the public, the idea, as you might have guessed, is to cover entire walls — and in this case, ceilings as well — with paint. The results are colorful and stunning. They include images of scenes such as railroads and surf around Taiwan, along with more graffiti-like portraits.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 ext 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until Sept. 20
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
It may be late August, but summer is pretty much here to stay and Fan Yang-tsung’s (范揚宗) poolside paintings will make you want to grab your swim cap and goggles and take a leap off the deep end. Done in a minimalistic style, his paintings are playful and humorous — swimmers bare ridiculous tan lines and beachgoers sprawl out in the sand. In his close-up paintings, glistening sweat droplets on swimmers’ backs are discernible. Fan’s poolside-beach utopia is so tantalizing that he even makes sunburns look sexy. His paintings are currently on display in the aptly named exhibition, Humidity (氣味潮濕) .
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Sept. 20
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
In this day and age, we seem to always be working towards something “better” instead of simply savoring the moment. The latest exhibition at the Barry Room in Taipei Artist Village seeks to explore what happens when you detach yourself from your physical environment and learn to live in the now. Entitled False Start: Situational Exploratorium (請入歧途:情境式探索) the exhibition features five artists from all over the world and includes works such as eteam’s fake Kickstarter project, which examines how people raise funds for the most absurd and selfish “causes,” as well as Yoon Hyang-ro’s compilation of landscapes that appear in comic books, which she strips of dialogue and characters. Also on display are works by Sally Richardson, Lee Byung-ho and Helene Juillet.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Sept. 23
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
Sound and light artist Yao Chung-han (姚仲涵) blurs the line between exhibition and performance in his new exhibition Light On-Site (時光現場) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. In it, he explores various rhythms created by the glare emanating from fluorescent lights. Yao said in a 2011 interview that he’s absolutely fascinated by sound and light because “they can fill up a space in a second and fade away in a blink.” He has many abstract objectives — using sound and light to deconstruct the notion of time which he believes to be a human construct — but besides that, his exhibition is simply fun to wander about and pretend that you’re in an EDM club that’s actually somewhat tame.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA), 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. 27
Inspired by Art Nouveau, a movement at the turn of the twentieth century that embraced household decorations and furniture as part of the realm of high art, NK Chao (趙南開) initially set out to create rainbow-colored tiles and glazed, transparent pottery. His artwork wavered between glossy and matt but tinges of color were always present in them. For his latest exhibition, however, Chao experiments with something different — namely, using white paint to paint his tiles. Yet he still manages to make use of texture, as well as light and darkness, to achieve a refreshing, effervescent feel. Endless White (白色無盡) is currently on display at Taipei’s A Gallery.
■ A Gallery (當代一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Lane 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
■ Until Oct. 10
The National Palace Museum never fails to deliver when it comes to delicate antiques that say as much about Chinese artistic and literary traditions as historical documents do. Their latest exhibition, The Printmaker’s Ingenuity and Craft: Ming and Qing Prints in the National Palace Museum (匠心筆蘊—院藏明清版畫特展), features woodcut prints made in the Ming and Qing dynasties which were also used as book covers and illustrations. The technique of woodcutting helped to introduce an aesthetic element to books. As such, books became objects that were not just enjoyed for their literary value, but their artistic value as well, as engravings were intricate and painstakingly done. The exhibition elegantly portrays the fusion of art and literature, and quite honestly, puts e-books and Kindle to shame.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Jan. 10
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
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
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built