Palm trees are beautiful but they are also poignant — just think about what chewing betel nuts can do to your oral health. Lin Yi-wei (林奕維) uses palm trees as a metaphor in his paintings to tell the history of modern Taiwan from Han Chinese immigration to industrialization in his latest solo exhibition, Riverlike Narrative (川型敘事). The title is derived from Yu Lihua’s (於梨華) 1967 novel Again the Palm Trees (又見棕櫚,又見棕櫚), which uses the palm tree as a symbol of rootedness. Notions of identity and belonging are in flux in Lin’s colorful and sleepy paintings, as highways and buildings tear into fields of palm trees.
■ 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
■ Until June 30
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
OCAC Group Exhibition 2016 (打開-當代選2016) is a joint exhibition of nine artists from the Open Contemporary Art Center. According to TKG+ Projects, the exhibition does not have an official title because it is meant to examine how artists construct relationships with one another. Though this may sound like a lazy excuse to evade the work of coming up with a catchy title, it sort of makes sense. Art is usually seen as a solitary pursuit, but it’s helpful to view different artworks by different artists as being in conversation with each other. Included in the lineup is calligrapher Shih Pei-chun (施佩君) as well as photographer and installation artist Hsu Chia-wei (許家維) whose work focuses on the Cold War in Asia. Also on display are the sculptures and installations of Chiu Chen-hong (邱承宏). Chiu’s work, which focuses on factories and the mining industry in Taiwan, exemplifies a hope for humans to foster a better and more holistic relationship with raw materials.
■ 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 July 3
Photo courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Chinese sculptor and installation artist Shi Jinsong (史金淞) has never been one to go with the grain. His latest solo exhibition, Shi Jin-song: A Personal Design Show (史金淞:個人設計博), uses bubble machines, hardware tools and other bizarre material to critique social and political systems that are set up to establish “authority” over the way people think and behave. Shi designs a world of his own — motorcycles made out of industrial waste, baby carriages made of armor — in order to deconstruct our world. His work is not just a big “fuck you” to authority, but it also goes to show how liberating it can be if we simply allow ourselves to think outside the conformist box.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA, Taipei), 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 July 3
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
Metaphysical Art Gallery is back with yet another awfully cheery exhibition, Three Travelers Three Epics (三個遊子三首偈), featuring Taiwanese artist Huang Ming-chan (黃銘昌), Chinese artist Ye Yongqing (葉永青) and Shintaro Miyake from Japan, and their colorful paintings inspired by their travels around the world. A realist painter, Huang makes the lush landscapes of Southeast Asia come alive with his depictions of water buffaloes swimming in lotus ponds. Ye’s paintings of migratory birds and flowers in bloom conveys a similar sense of simplicity and freedom. He projects human aspirations onto the creatures he draws, hinting that we could also be as free as they are if we just stopped worrying about worldly things. Finally, Miyake’s paintings of oval-faced cartoon characters as Egyptian pharaohs and gods brings a touch of humor to ancient Egyptian history.
■ Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊), 7F, 219, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段219號7樓), tel: (02) 2771-3236. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Until July 9
Japan in the early 20th century was bent on studying Western ways, including art, and Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita was one of the lucky few to travel abroad to learn the trade. Foujita knew no one when he arrived in Paris in 1913, though he soon befriended Picasso, Matisse and other artists who were part of the “School of Paris” (a group of French and foreign artists working in Paris pre-World War I). Foujita’s paintings — whether of female nudes or cats, or nude women holding cats — are all very dainty and witty (think New Yorker covers). Galerie Nichido Taipei is currently exhibiting a collection of Foujita’s paintings, along with artwork by other renowned artists from the School of Paris, including Marie Laurencin, Moise Kisling and Maurice Utrillo. The exhibition is aptly titled Foujita and the School of Paris (藤田嗣治與巴黎畫派).
■ Galerie Nichido Taipei (台北日動畫廊), 3F, 57, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段57號3樓), tel: (02) 2579-8795. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 16
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is currently showcasing a collection of 35 years of artwork by Chinese-born, Taiwan-raised American artist Daniel Lee (李小鏡) in Looking Glass — Daniel Lee Retrospective (鏡 ─ 李小鏡回顧展). Lee, who initially got his start as a portrait photographer in New York in the 1970s, eventually progressed to combining photography, drawings and fine art. His past work includes Manimals (1993) — human-animal hybrids created by interjecting animal characteristics of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac into human portraits via photo generation. Also to be exhibited at TFAM is Next, which is Lee’s latest series of 3D prints and animations that envisions a future where humans have evolved into fish-like creatures and live in water.
■ 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 Aug. 14
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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