The gelatin silver prints by Austrian photographers Ina Forstinger and Gerald Berghammer are currently on display at Taipei’s 1839 Contemporary Gallery in an exhibition entitled Silverfineart Photography (銀鹽照片). The black-and-white images taken from their travels — from the glaciers of Iceland to the cityscapes of Dubai — have a mystical and lustrous quality that makes them look both antique and modern.
■ 1839 Contemporary Gallery (當代藝廊), B1, 120 Yanji St, Taipei City (台北市延吉街120號B1), tel: (02) 2778-8458. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Until Jan. 31
Photo courtesy of Bluerider Art
Performance artist River Lin (林人中) is putting on quite a show at the Barry Room in Taipei Artist Village. Entitled Encounter Project: The Exhibition Of Our Own (邂逅計畫 — 兩個人的展覽), the installation draws on Lin’s recent performance art shows in London, Paris and Berlin. While it’s probably unclear to most ordinary people what the larger significance of Lin’s work is, attendees should be forewarned that there “might” be nudity at the performance. Not only that, but audiences “might” also be called upon to “perform” with the artist, which, according to the gallery notes, “might” include listening to a song, taking a walk or “kissing each other or doing nothing.” I certainly hope I’ll fall into the “doing nothing” category if I attend Lin’s show.
■ 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 Feb. 6
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Bluerider Art is celebrating their second anniversary with Selectbration: 2nd Anniversary Show (兩週年慶精選特展), a joint exhibition featuring the works of some of the past artists who have exhibited at the gallery. Emily Carew Woodard’s Victorian-esque paintings are of well-dressed, charming rabbits, rats, raccoons and other animals. Growing up in the Cornish countryside, Woodard spent a lot of her time in the woods and was constantly surrounded by animals. As such, she endows them with human qualities. Nick Veasey’s X-ray photography are also on display, as are Rine Boyer’s paintings of hipsters dancing, talking and drinking beer.
■ Bluerider Art (藍騎士藝術空間), 9F, 25-1, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段25-1號9樓), tel: (02) 2752-2238. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 9am to 6pm
■ Until Feb. 20
Photo courtesy of Bluerider Art
New media artist Wang Chung-kun’s latest exhibition, Making Sound (造聲), opens at Project Fulfill Art Space tomorrow with a live sound performance at 5pm. Wang, who previously dabbled in dance and theater, has been known to add a performance element to most of his kinetic sculptures and sound art. For the series sound.of.suitcase, Wang was influenced by portable sound devices. He repurposed bulky instruments such as organs and gramophones, converting them into installations that viewers can interact with. The series first previewed at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2014.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Feb. 27
Shanghai-born, Los Angeles-based Taiwanese artist Ku Fu-sheng (顧福生) has been dazzling the art world for decades with his vibrant and colorful paintings, most of which are a blend of impressionism with Chinese sensibilities (his stamp is always on the bottom right hand corner of his paintings). His latest exhibition at Taipei’s Eslite Gallery, Song of Myself: Selected Works of Ku Fu-sheng, 1960-2015 (自我之歌—顧福生1960-2015作品選集), includes an exhaustive selection of his works created over the years in Taipei, Paris and various cities across the US. Ku’s work almost always revolved around the concept of the individual (most notably, a male individual) and his relationship with his surroundings, with other people and with his inner self. Works in his later years tended more towards simplicity, with his human subjects taking on more shapeless and fluid figures.
■ 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. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 28
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would