Kuo Bor-jou’s (郭博州) abstract images are inspired by feelings and memories of his native Tainan and his travels around the world. Starting tomorrow, Liang Gallery will feature a series of Kuo’s montages — colorful canvases layered with found objects, printmaking and paint. Beyond the World of Ink and Color (墨彩.塵外) explores the endless possibilities of paint as a medium and how it can be distorted and sculpted to look like something it is not.
■ 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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 4
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Chini Gallery will hold a solo exhibition by Lee Kuang-yu (李光裕), which will run concurrently with the Venice Biennale. To Have and Have Not (有無之際—李光裕大型個展) will show a selection of Lee’s bronze sculptures, while the others will be on display at the San Marino Pavilion in Venice. Lee’s sculptures are influenced by Buddhist and Taoist beliefs which he interweaves with a tongue-in-cheek, nuanced humor. The title comes from a novel by Ernest Hemingway of the same name and explores today’s global and economic instability and the choices people make when pushed into dire circumstances.
■ Chini Gallery (采泥藝術), 48, Lane 128 Jingye 1st Rd, Taipei City (台北市敬業一路128巷48號), tel: (02) 7729-5809. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 7pm
■ Until June 11
Photo courtesy of Chini Gallery
Opening tomorrow at Tina Keng Gallery is a solo exhibition by Chen Chun-hao (陳浚豪), who known for engineering the “mosquito nail” technique where he uses a nail gun to shoot tiny nails into canvases stretched over wood. In Once Upon an Otherworldly Realm (天圓、地方、非人間), Chen creates replicas of 11th-century paintings found in the emperor’s court. The result of Chen’s imitation is both poetic and jarring. On the one hand, he seeks to preserve tradition, but on the other hand, he’s also mocking its significance by using cheap, mass-produced materials.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until July 2
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
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
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