This weekend at Cathay United Art Center, veteran Taiwanese artist Yang Yung-fu (楊永福), opens his solo painting exhibition, Dusk Veiled Autumn (輕霞秋日). Yang is a prolific painter who has devoted much of his career to exploring the natural scenery and streetscapes of Taiwan. In this exhibition, he shows over 100 recent paintings that follow this thematic pursuit. His works are often praised to have cultural significance, featuring historical buildings and picturesque local sights. Working primarily plein air, Yang emphasizes the art of picture making. He plays with contours, shapes and color, and chooses scenery that he finds first and foremost visually interesting. Aside from this ongoing pursuit of painting in situ, Yang also presents in this exhibition recent, studio-based paintings that depict his collection of late Ming, early Qing Dynasty clothing. Longevity Like A Pine (松鶴康齡), for example, is a large still-life portrait of a women’s garment decorated with rich embroidery, accompanied by traditional Chinese baskets and a backdrop of calligraphy. In this series, Yang incorporates Chinese symbols of blessing, including white cranes and pine trees, which send messages of abundance and goodwill.
■ Cathay United Art Center (國泰世華藝術中心), 7F, 236, Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路236號7樓), tel: (02) 2717-0988. Opens Monday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Nov. 25
Photo Courtesy of Cathay United Art Center
Chung He-hsien (鐘和憲) is a young Taiwanese artist who creates meticulous 3D renditions of fantastical worlds inhabited by monstrous creatures. The title of his current solo exhibition Loser Gem (敗犬的寶玉) is a spinoff of a rare collectable gem featured in the popular role-playing video game Monster Hunter. While this particular gem can be perceived as malice or treasure depending on differing point of views, Chung finds it to be a fitting metaphor for his ongoing interest in the translations of meanings and values in the course of dissemination. Loser Gem is also the name of the exhibition’s featured project, a multi-media installation composed of hand sketches, video, original soundtrack and a VR component. The VR component allows you to gain access to a secret part of the project, hidden in a virtual locked safe. “This is a very personal work for me,” says the artist as he recounts the heartbreaking loss of a friend who had first inspired the soundtrack and hand sketches involved in the project. The hidden part of the project may take some effort to attain, and the outcome may or may not be deserving of the term gem. This social game experiment may produce a spectrum of opinions, and these different ways of seeing is precisely what Chung is most interested in.
■ To Dear Alternative Gallery (小路上), 7, Ln 77, Roosevelt Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路三段77巷7號), tel: (02) 2363-7768. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until tomorrow
Photo Courtesy of Link Lion
At the manga and illustration-focused gallery Mangasick, Kyoto-based underground artist Em Nishizuka is showing a selection of 20 colorful watercolors on paper, Egg Shell, that reveal her ongoing interest in the interaction among plants, insects and humans. Within these pictures, Em seeks to find the perfect balance between the naturally repulsive quality of insects and the innocent purity of teenage boys and girls. Her colors are often richly warm, sometimes shy and subtle, and other times cold and lifeless. Between these contrasting elements, Em considers her search for equilibrium as a compassionate act of embrace, as if to seek a new state of understanding between humans and nature. The piece Egg Shell depicts a nonchalant young girl cuddling a giant caterpillar on a bed of flowers. The caterpillar lightly touches the young girl’s lips while she stares without focus into the distance. Em is interested in exploring an alternative softness, and her characters often posses a sense of melancholy and fragility that seems to characterize the age of adolescence. This show is Em’s first exhibition in Taipei.
■ Mangasick, B1, 2, Alley 10, Ln 244, Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路3段244巷10弄2號B1), tel: (02) 2369-9969. Opens Thursdays to Tuesdays from 2pm to 10pm
■ Until Nov. 28
Photo Courtesy of Mangasick
Catch the last week of Toumei (透明), a glass exhibition by Fukuoka-based duo Baku Takahashi and Tomoko Wada. Working with glass for over a decade, the team remains fascinated by the ever-changing material and continues to find new discoveries and challenges within the medium. Their works are predominantly sculptural forms and assemblages that are playful and imaginative. Takahashi is particularly skilled in working with glass at its melting point, when the material is both malleable and solid. He often starts with a large number of sketches, drawing inspiration from daily life and the subconscious. Takashi says it is important to maintain a good mood in order create the humor in his work. Wada, on the other hand, creates arrangements of small glass fragments, often laid out in the confines of an architectural shape. Her work explores the dynamics of space structured by a poetic rhythm. For Wada, her works do not embody a concrete meaning and encourage the viewer’s free interpretation and appreciation.
■ Lion Link (雄獅星空), 2F, 9 Nanjing W Rd, Taipei City (台北市南京西路9號2樓), tel: (02) 2523-6173. Opens Tuesdays to Fridays from 1pm to 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
■ Until tomorrow
Photo Courtesy of Artist
Our Ki-Lrigan Story House (咱的唭哩岸故事庄) is an exhibition organized by Ki-Lrigan Culture Studio (唭哩岸文化工作室), a grassroots project that seeks to promote community engagement and historical preservation in Ki-Lrigan, an old neighborhood in Beitou District (北投區). While Beitou has developed into a hot spring tourist attraction, awareness of its historical memories and cultural developments are in need of improvement. Ki-Lrigan is a distinct area of Beitou that holds a 300 year-old legacy of quarrying. The Ki-Lrigan stone is appreciated for its dense quartz content, which makes it highly fire resistant. Stone excavation began in the Qing Dynasty and continued until the 1980s. At its height, there were up to 10 quarries active in the area. The exhibition features creative displays and artworks created by cultural workers participating in Ki Lrigan Culture Studio’s storytelling training program. Highlights in the show include documentation of oral histories, original songs about the district’s history and preserved artifacts that were vital to the quarrying industry.
■ Mooring in Qilian (來唭投-唭哩岸社區共生空間), 265 Zunxian St, Taipei City (台北市尊賢街265號), tel: 0917-678-090. Please contact space for opening hours.
■ Until Nov. 26
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built