VT Art Salon is currently featuring a series of video installations by sound artist Wu Tsan-Cheng (吳燦政), in an exhibition entitled Zero (恥). Wu claims the videos have “no narrative” and “no passion,” and that “it will be a bland movie” with lots of juxtaposition of images of jungles and cities, animals and humans. There will be “no judgement, no criticism,” Wu adds. Perhaps Wu means that the viewer is supposed to draw his or her own inferences from the clips about human nature and primitivism — though I don’t buy the idea that he’s trying to abstain from imposing his own viewpoints onto the viewer.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Until Aug. 6
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
The Invisible Sound (看不見的聲音) is a solo exhibition at Taipei’s Liang Gallery featuring the works of Tainan-born artist Tsai Kuen-lin (蔡坤霖). The works exhibited range from photography and printmaking to sound and video installations, though many of Tsai’s works contain plastic pipes, which he twists and sculpts into different shapes. The centerpiece of this exhibition is Outside Inside (2016), an interactive sound installation made with plastic pipes, wood and photo frames. Viewers are welcome to climb on the installation and listen to sounds they would normally hear in a sprawling urban city. In his photography installation Still Life — Non-organic (2013), Tsai explores the idea of consumerism and brings into question the relationship between food and affordability.
■ 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 Aug. 7
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Hydrangea flowers usually take on varying hues, including white, light purple, and pastel blue and pink, but printmaking artist Yang Chen-hua (楊振華) chooses to color his flowers black. Entitled Black Hydrangea (黑色繡球) and held at the printmaking arts and crafts store MBMore, Yang’s solo exhibition explores the idea of withering beauty through a series of collagraphs of plants, though he does so in a way that’s cute and comical — for example, through little creatures gnawing on leaves. In fact, Yang creates a whimsical world where the whole idea of beauty is sort of topsy-turvy.
■ MBMore (岩筆模), 275, Nanjing W Rd, Taipei City (台北市南京西路275號), tel: (02) 2558-3395. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Aug. 14
Photo courtesy of MBMore
Digital artist Tu Pei-shih (杜珮詩) currently has a solo exhibition at Taipei’s Digital Art Center. Entitled The Abstraction Series (抽象系列), the exhibition consists of two of Tu’s videos, Cumming Inside Her Asian Pussy (2015) and Gennady Golovkin vs Marco Antonio Rubio (2016). In the former work, a single-channel animation, Tu uses stop motion to reproduce a video she found on Pornhub.com. The result is a heavily pixelated series of motions that looks like a conglomeration of orange and yellow squares moving about (way to make sex look unsexy). The latter work is a four-channel animation reproduced from a boxing match in 2014 which Tu found on YouTube. Like the former video, it’s also very zoomed-in and pixelated, though Tu manages to capture the excitement in this one. The video is a brilliant compilation of flashes of light and an overall feeling of disorientation.
■ Digital Art Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180, Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Aug. 21
Photo courtesy of MBMore
The National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung City is currently showcasing a couple of intriguing exhibitions. One of them is Story of Water: Science, Civilization and Future (聽水的故事:水的科學.文明.未來), which, you guessed it, tells the history of water on our planet. Two-thirds of the earth is water, and civilizations have been built around rivers. The exhibition uses interactive displays and installations to educate viewers on the importance of water to our existence. Also taking place at the museum is the 4th Taiwan Indigenous Youth Arts Festival (蝶舞青春). On display are traditional Aboriginal crafts including leather carvings, sculptures and dye work made by Aboriginal high school students from across Taiwan.
■ National Museum of Prehistory, 1 Museum Rd, Taitung City (台東市博物館路1號), tel: (08) 938-1166, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Story of Water is until Aug. 31. Indigenous Youth Arts Festival is until Sept. 11
Photo courtesy of Digital Art Center
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and