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
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