Chinese artist Shen Liang (申亮) is not one to shy away from criticizing his government.
With a blend of patchwork-like, overlapping brush strokes with specks of graffiti splattered throughout the canvas, the meaning behind Shen’s work is as multifaceted as his technique. While he’s no Ai Weiwei (艾未未), in 2007, Shen took a stab at propaganda from the Cultural Revolution by reproducing the covers of comic books from that era, then defacing them with graffiti, in turn showing the absurdity of equating graffiti with high art. In another piece, he fleshes out the discrepancy between the extravagant food that Chinese Communist Party officials ate and how his mother used to sneak him treats. His solo exhibition, Shen Liang (申亮), is currently on display at Taipei’s Lin & Lin Gallery.
■ 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
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
■ Until Nov. 1
After a successful run exhibiting Fan Yang-tsung’s (范揚宗) poolside paintings, Aki Gallery continues to celebrate the prolonged summer weather with a joint exhibition of German Felix Rehfeld’s and Japanese Hideyuki Igarashi’s colorful oil paintings that resemble water droplets and ripples in ponds. Entitled Accurate Reason Contemporary German & Japanese Art (精準的理性德日當代藝術展), the exhibition examines reflections and illusions — in particular, the distortion of reality. Despite their different cultural backgrounds, both artists share a similar style. There’s a sense of fluidity in their artwork that make the pieces appear more like glazed ceramics than oil paintings, as well as giving off a cool, art deco-esque aura.
■ 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
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
■ Until Nov. 1
Chinese artist Zhang Enli (張恩利) has filled up entire rooms and corridors at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art with colorful, lively brush strokes. This is not the first time the Shanghai-based artist has created site-specific artwork, or “space paintings,” as he calls them. Resembling life-sized kaleidoscopes, the work has made onlookers feel dizzy at galleries throughout South Korea and India. Interestingly, Zhang started out painting people in the 1990s, before moving on to inanimate objects such as rolls of toilet paper and intertwined plastic pipes. Either way, Zhang has refused to step into pop art or cynical realism like many of his contemporaries. To him, there’s enough critique on politics and social ills within the art world already. Self-Sustained Artworks by Zhang Enli (閑置 — 張恩利作品展) is currently being held at MOCA, and includes not only Zhang’s space paintings, but a few of his works on canvas as well.
■ 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
Photo courtesy of MOCA Taipei
■ Until Nov. 8
Young artist Niu Chun-chiang (牛俊強) examines, through his paintings, the natural tendency of some people to withdraw into their own worlds — people who need time alone to gather their thoughts. Instead of seeing this as misanthropic, Niu finds beauty in such withdrawal. His paintings are deeply introspective and have a calming allure. While some of his subjects are fully clothed, others simply don their birthday suits — because you can think easier when you’re naked? The individual versus the group is another interesting facet of Niu’s work. He depicts how people behave differently in both types of settings, suggesting that human nature is slyer than we believe it to be. Niu’s paintings will be on display starting tomorrow at Michael Ku Gallery in the aptly named exhibition, Niu Chun-chiang solo exhibition (牛俊強個展).
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Nov. 15
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) is dovetailing into more diverse and multidisciplinary art forms by featuring two very different exhibitions this week. Born in Beijing in 1934 and having spent his formative years in Taiwan, Chuang Che’s paintings are a blend of haphazard bright colors and controlled black brush strokes. A harmonious mix of Western expressionism and Chinese ink techniques, Chuang’s artwork bridges many divides. On the one hand, the overlapping of different color paper and ink washes gives his artwork an abstract feel. Yet, they also resemble landscapes such as waterfalls, mountains and forests, all of which is common in traditional Chinese painting. Chuang’s work can be seen on display in an exhibition entitled Effusive Vitality: Chuang Che Retrospective Exhibition.
Also on display at TFAM is a titillating exhibit only open to those above the age of 18. Inspired by the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, The Night of Sodom (索多瑪之夜) explores the disturbing trifecta of sex, violence and depression. Penned in 1785, just four years before the storming of the Bastille, Sade’s black-humored novel tells the tale of four wealthy men who engage in a series of orgies in a harem with 46 teenagers, both male and female. It’s hard to tell what the moral of the story is — that orgies are fun but can go horribly wrong? The collaborative exhibition at TFAM, with Taipei National University of the Arts’ Center for Art and Technology director Wang Jun-jieh (王俊傑) as artistic director, is a digital reinterpretation of Sade’s tale. It centers on the murder of a teenager and explores the themes of eroticism and cruelty. A mixture of animation, video and performance art as well as other media, the exhibition is as exciting as it is horrifying. While heralding the use of new media, the exhibition also turns a critical eye on itself, revealing the destructive tendencies of technology.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館 TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (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
■ Effusive Vitality runs until Jan. 3. The Night of Sodom runs 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
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