Young artist Hsu Chiao-yen (許喬彥) has always used cheap materials from everyday life that people tend to chuck away — including paper boxes, plastic bags and beat-up banners — to create his installation pieces. His work is very tactile in nature — they jut out at odd angles and make you want to reach out and touch them — focusing primarily on the idea of exhuming memories. For his latest solo exhibition Wafer, A Biscuit (威化,一種餅乾), held at Taipei’s IT Park Gallery, Hsu creates miniature sculptures that are inspired by wafers (a biscuit with a thin but crisp outer layer with soft cream filling sandwiched in between). To create the “wafers,” Hsu uses two contrasting materials — wax, which tends to melt, and paint, which naturally hardens. As the exhibition goes on and the sculptures are continually exposed to external elements, they will change shape, mimicking the way that our memories evolve over time. (I suggest heading over to IT Park Gallery as soon as possible as there’s only so much that air conditioning can do in this heat.)
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Until Oct. 3
Photo courtesy of IT Park Gallery
Many artists explore the theme of returning to nature, while others choose to lament that technology alienates us and numbs our feelings within the walls of concrete jungles. Japanese artist Tadayuki Tahara has combined both themes into his installation works quite beautifully. His past works have included streams of water flowing like veins across wooden floorboards of a soon-to-be demolished house, as well as tree branches growing out of electric cables. His latest exhibition, Capture Another Infrastructure (翻轉基礎建設), opens tomorrow at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei and continues the examination of the interconnectedness between nature and infrastructure. As Tahara states in the gallery notes, “Nature is the basis to the world as infrastructure is the basis to society.” The difference, however, is that interacting with nature — for instance, watching the sunset on a beach — evokes emotions in a way that a building or road could never achieve. The question of whether or not infrastructure can be seen beyond its mere functionality is something that Tahara explores in this new exhibition.
■ Attic Gallery (閣樓展覽室), Treasure Hill Artist Village (寶藏巖國際藝術村), 2, Alley 14, Ln 230, Dingzhou Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市汀州路三段230巷14弄2號), tel: (02) 2364-5313. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Oct. 11
Photo courtesy of In River Gallery
Chou Chen (周宸) captures the vast spectrum of natural landscapes with his multi-textured, abstract paintings that range in colors from rich crimson to silky gray. In the past, Chou has dabbled with brush painting and worked with materials as diverse as glass, steel and cloth. However, he sticks with oil on canvas for his current exhibition, Infinite Containment (無盡藏), at Taipei’s In River Gallery. It might seem like a safe bet, but the results are just as evocative. The deep hues Chou uses, as well as the thick, punctuated brush strokes, create a feeling that is at once peaceful and intense, which is often how one feels in the presence of untouched nature.
■ In River Gallery (穎川畫廊), 2F, 45, Renai Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路一段45號2樓), tel: (02) 2357-9900. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm
■ Until Oct. 14
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki loves repetitive motifs. He’s filled up the floors and walls of entire galleries with rainbow floral patterns and public spaces with bubbles. His latest solo exhibition, Tectonics by Shinji Ohmaki (構築之詩), which opens tomorrow at Taipei’s Mind Set Art Center, will focus on transparent cubes positioned to resemble tectonic plates. Intricate squiggly lines are painted on the surface of the cubes, giving them a sense of movement, while the transparency creates a fragile feel. They are meant to represent the malleability of human memory, which is easily altered or reconstructed rather than being set in stone. This is achieved through angle distortion, since viewers get a skewed sense of what’s being depicted when peering into the transparent cubes. In fact, being able to see through the cubes is an important part of the exhibition, as people can project their own impressions onto what the artwork means.
■ 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 Oct. 17
Taipei’s Liang Gallery is featuring the works of 11 Taiwanese sculptors from different generations of the 20th century in the aptly titled exhibition, Tribute to the Masters — Exhibition of Taiwan’s Eleven Senior Sculptors (向大師致敬 — 台灣前輩雕塑11家大展). A notable piece is late artist Huang Tu-shui’s (黃土水) Water Buffaloes (水牛群像) sculpture from 1930, which was posthumously assigned the coveted title of national treasure by the Ministry of Culture. Also on display are Yuyu Yang’s (楊英風) sleek and minimalist stainless steel sculptures created between the 1970s and the 1990s. An interesting theme throughout the exhibition is nudity, or more precisely, naked women. Apparently the wonders of the female body have captured the attention of generations of enamored male sculptors (big surprise). A timeless theme, indeed.
■ Liang Gallery (尊彩藝術中心), 366, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路366號), tel: (02) 2797-1100. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until Nov. 22
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