Toronto-based photographer Pohan Wu’s (吳柏翰) surrealist and psychedelic photographs and audio-visual installations are currently on view at 1839 Contemporary Gallery. Magic as Muse (音樂繆斯) takes photography to the other-worldly realm — or at least the equally elusive realm of human emotions — and proves that photography does not always need to be used as a means of documenting the physical world.
■ 1839 Contemporary Gallery (當代藝廊), B1, 120 Yanji St, Taipei City (台北市延吉街120號B1), tel: (02) 2778-8458. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 8pm
■ Until May 7
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
A Gallery has two concurrent exhibitions, both of which embed miniature people and cities within the larger landscape of ink painting. In Want to Leave These Moments For Them (想為它們留下那些瞬間), Chen Tzu-jo (陳芷若) sketches tiny bridges, buildings and cityscapes in the blotches in between layers of ink. Chiu Ling-lin (邱伶琳) applies a similar method, drawing silhouettes of different-sized petal-shaped people to form mountainous landscapes in her latest series of works There Is No Grief (解消傷懷). Both techniques are so painstaking and subtle that from afar they look like abstract landscape paintings or paintings of flowers but up close, they seem to suggest an entire civilizations.
■ A Gallery (當代一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Lane 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號), tel: (02) 2702-3327. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until May 13
Photo courtesy of In River Gallery
Ever found a hidden beach or garden that you wanted to boast about but also wanted to keep secret? Wang Yu-ting’s (王宥婷) invokes this sentiment in her latest solo exhibition, Somewhere Only We Know (____的秘境) at the Barry Room in Taipei Artist Village. The exhibition includes photographs of anonymous lakes, forests and other landscapes taken by Wang during her artist residency in New Zealand. The use of the blank space in the Chinese name, followed by the words “secret location” (秘境) implies a sense of mystery and adventure that comes with exploring uncharted territory, where viewers can substitute their own “secret locations.”
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until May 21
Photo courtesy of In River Gallery
A Mirage (迷景考) opens at In River gallery tomorrow and is a joint exhibition of work by Huang Po-hsun (黃柏勳) and Lu Xiangyi (鹿向夷). Huang’s vibrant and colorful paintings resemble otherworldly places — glittering purple forests, pink sea creatures — but they also seem to evoke the lush and tropical climate of his native Kaohsiung. Lu, meanwhile, uses mostly pastel greens and yellows to convey both the calm and intensity, as well as the vast loneliness of nature.
■ In River Gallery (穎川畫廊), 2F, 45, Renai Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路一段45號2樓), tel: (02) 2357-9900. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 24
Photo courtesy of 1839 Contemporary Gallery
Psychedelic and otherworldly seem to be popular motifs at art galleries as of late. Zero Gravity Paradise (失重樂園) featuring the works of Japanese computer graphic artist Kawaguchi Yoichiro, which opens at MOCA, Taipei tomorrow, is inspired by the Cambrian Explosion 541 million years ago. Since the 1970s, Kawaguchi has been using 3D growth algorithms to generate his own wacky fluorescent creature called Eggy. Viewers can see how Eggy has grown and evolved over the years while confronting their own monsters.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 18
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
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