Three Places: for Marguerite Duras, 2003 to 2006 (三個地方:致瑪格麗特.莒哈絲) is an exhibition at TKG+ Projects by artist Yeh Wei-li (葉偉立) that pays tribute to his favorite writer, Marguerite Duras. The late French writer was born in Indochina (present-day Vietnam) and frequently wrote about the intertwining themes of love (especially forbidden love) and loss, a predicament cleverly played out in Yeh’s series of iridescently-lit paintings which line the walls of TKG+. The images of empty rooms and spaces create a sense of eerie calm, mirroring scenes from Duras’ short story The Atlantic Man, when a woman cleans her lover’s apartment after his funeral.
■ TKG+ Projects, B1, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 5
Photo courtesy of ArtDoor Gallery
It’s been a chilly couple of days, but the bright colors from artwork by Malaysian artists are warming up the walls of ArtDoor Gallery in their latest exhibition, Malaysian Contemporary Art Collection (馬來西雅當代藝術收藏展). Included in the line-up are the surrealist-style paintings of Chin Kong-yee (陳剛毅) depicting typical street scenes from busy intersections in Kuala Lumpur, as well as famous monuments and sites from his travels around the world. Chin paints from a bird’s eye view, which has the effect of peering into a narrow kaleidoscope. The purpose, he says, is to show that nothing in this world is stagnant, that people and places are always changing and evolving. And what better metaphor to choose than a bird — a creature that’s always on the go? Also on display are Adeputra Masri’s elaborate paintings of wayang kulit (shadow puppet) characters from Javanese folklore, reimagined in present-day situations. His paintings are intentionally two-dimensional, alluding to the theatrical stage where the puppet shows are performed. Saiful Razman’s pop art-style work and Fendy Zakri’s abstract paintings are also featured in the exhibition.
■ ArtDoor Gallery (藝境畫廊) 639, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路639號), tel: (02) 2658-5268. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 28
Photo courtesy of Aura Gallery
Two stunning photography exhibitions open at Taipei’s Aura Gallery tomorrow: Japan 1982 (日本1982) by Yilan-born Taiwanese artist Juan I-jong (阮義忠) and Taipei Kissyo (台北吉祥) by Tokyo-born Japanese artist Suda Issei. Both artists are well-known for capturing scenes of everyday life in their respective countries, especially shots of commuters coming and going on busy streets. In the early ‘80s, Juan traveled to Tokyo and Issei traveled to Taipei. Juan’s black-and-white photographs of Tokyo, which depict a bleak and grimy reality in the form of people hunched over in phone booths and others breezing past, foreshadow what would become the rigidity of city life in the Japanese capital decades later. Issei’s photographs of people with big hair and colorful clothes, by contrast, illustrate the gritty euphoria of 1980s Taipei on the brink of something great, notably economic prosperity.
■ Aura Gallery Taipei (亦安畫廊台北), 313, Dunhua N Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段313號); tel: (02) 2752-7002. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 12pm to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until March 12
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is currently featuring yet another exhibition that challenges the perceived realm of what’s considered to be traditional “fine art.” The Way Things Go (物 .理) is a joint exhibition consisting of several artists from around the world, all of whom dabble in installation, sound and interactive art. Visitors will see Nicholas Hanna’s Bubble Device, which, you guessed it, blows giant bubbles out of a giant bubble-blowing machine. Also on display is Tseng Wei-hao’s (曾偉豪) Talking Forest, an installation that uses electricity-conducting pencils and pens to emit sounds using a feedback loop. The sounds are produced in sync with images projected on a wall. Through intermixing art with other disciplines, the purpose of the exhibition is to challenge the way the human brain is wired to look at things.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 台北市立美術館), 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
■ Until April 17
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The National Palace Museum rarely disappoints. Currently on display is Precious as the Morning Star: 12th-14th Century Celadons in the Qing Court Collection (貴似晨星—清宮傳世12至14世紀青瓷特展). As the title of the exhibition suggests, the museum is housing a rare collection of green celadon ware made during the Song Dynasty. These precious pieces of pottery, including bowls and water pitchers, once belonged in the chambers of the imperial court of the Qing Dynasty. An excavation in 1998 of Tiger Cave Kiln (老虎洞窯) in Zhejiang Province confirmed that, yes, the celadon ware was indeed deemed highly valuable, and that those who lived in the imperial court liked to be surrounded by pretty things.
■ 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 April 18
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