Opening tomorrow at Haohaus is Doomsday Imagination (末日想像), a rather morbid exhibition of selected works by Huang Yao-hsin (黃耀鋅) and Chung He-hsien (鍾和憲). Both artists take an apocalyptic view on human nature and evolution — in particular, the notion that human beings are prone to conflict and that civilizations have come and gone because destruction is in our nature. While Huang’s paintings are more farcical and employ a good dose of dark humor, Chung’s installations of futuristic-like creatures are beautiful and celestial.
■ Haohaus (好思當代), 3F, 113, Chongqing S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市重慶南路一段113號3樓), tel: (02) 2311-0158. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Feb. 3
Photo courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Hsieh Chun-te (謝春德) provides his take on the world of dementia patients in his latest multimedia exhibition at MOCA, The Parallel Universe of Hsieh Chun-te — Brave The World (謝春德平行宇宙系列─勇敢世界). Themes explored include the life cycle, in particular a return to childlike innocence in elderly people with dementia, and how innocence can be a very endearing and powerful trait. Other themes include the disconnect between mind and body and the questions of life after death, eternal life and the like. Hsieh’s videos of live subjects are the most moving, as he captures their humanity in a way that’s poignant and inspiring.
■ 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 Feb. 5
Photo courtesy of HaoHaus
The artworks of different generations of Taiwanese artists who blend Eastern and Western influences are on display at Eslite Gallery. If It Be Your Will That I Speak No More (如果沈默是你的旨意) features Ku Fu-sheng (顧福生), who is known for his vibrant paintings inspired by Western impressionism and Chinese sensibilities. Most of his work deals with the concept of the individual (often times a male) and his relationship with his surroundings. Evident in his earlier paintings is a sense of hyperawareness, while his later paintings tend to gravitate towards simplicity and exude a sense of calm. The exhibition also includes Tsong Pu’s (莊普) expressionist paintings of Chinese landscapes made out of tiny, pixelated squares rather than brushstrokes.
■ 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. 5
Photo courtesy of MOCA
Practitioner from the South (南方行者) is a solo exhibition by Wang Fu-tung (王福東) who claims that people are his main subjects. Wang’s paintings obfuscate their faces in such a way that they blend into the background. From afar, his work looks like a haphazard patchwork of colorful brushstrokes. His focus is on human feelings and emotions — how they internalize the world around them and make sense of things. Wang is obviously fascinated by the idea of humanity and the human race in a macro sense, especially questions that have plagued us since the beginning of time, for instance, mortality, or the meaning of life in general.
■ Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術), 17, Alley 51, Ln 12, Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市八德路三段12巷51弄17號), tel: (02) 2578-5630. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until Feb. 19
Photo courtesy of HaoHaus
Opening tomorrow at the Children’s Art Education Center at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum is Collecting & So On (集什麼), a series of interactive exhibitions by artists from around the world that aims to engage children through storytelling, tours and workshops. The exhibition also includes artworks that kids would probably find appealing such as Wu Chien-yi’s (吳芊頤) colorful collages of whimsical street scenes seen from behind wrought-iron grilles and Wang Ya-hui’s (王雅慧) video installations of dust collected from her home. There will also be photographs of children from around the world and the toys that they play with by Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Sept. 17
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