Chang Chien-chi (張乾琦) is a renowned Taiwanese photojournalist whose work continually explores the human experience and the effects of alienation and connection. Chang has been a member of the international photo cooperative Magnum since 2001 and was awarded a Magnum Emergency Grant in 2016 to fund his self-assigned trip to Burma. During his extensive travels throughout the country, he captured the state of the Burmese people just after Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed State Counselor. Chang’s project is presented as a video of still and moving images with sound and will be shown as part of his solo exhibition opening tomorrow at Chi-Wen Gallery. The video, entitled Burma: The Promise Betrayed, places special focus on the plight of the Rohingya and his disappointment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s policies that have done little to address the country’s longstanding issue of ethnic persecution. “The promise of her infant democracy is fading … Instead of a Shining Star, The Lady will become a sad historical footnote,” Chang writes in an artist statement. Concurrently in the same exhibition, Chang will also show another recent video work Azma which captures the state of Syria during his travels from Lesbos to the Syrian border. The video addresses how the people have been affected by ongoing conflict, a complex situation that the Syrians simply refer to as azma, or crisis.
■ Chi-Wen Gallery (其玟畫廊), 1F, 32 Ln 2, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6, Taipei City (台北市中山北路六段2巷32號1樓), tel: (02)2837-0237. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Through April 28
Photo Courtesy of artist, Chi-Wen Gallery, Magnum Photos
How do we describe reality in the digital era? Can reality be created, and how can it be customized? These are questions asked in Customized Reality: The Lure and Enchantment of Digital Art, a group exhibition that explores the concept of reality as something that is constantly in flux and continually affected by our advancements in science and technology. Featuring 14 international and local artists from Australia, China, Taiwan, and Japan, the show includes a selection of videos, installations, augmented and virtual reality projects as well as live performances. Australian collective PluginHUMAN’s Dream 2.2 is an interactive installation that uses the viewer’s brain waves to control how light shines on a labyrinth of plastic curtains. Yuan Guang-ming’s (袁廣鳴) Dwelling features a virtually rendered living room that experiences a looped process of explosion and recovery. Hiraki Sawa’s Ethereal is a two-channel video of a burning candle and a tapping hand presented in a small still-life diptych. A program of audiovisual and virtual reality performances by art collective NAXS and computer Wang Sue-ya (王思雅) are scheduled for April.
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wuquan W Rd Sec 1, Taichung City (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2373-3552. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 6pm.
■ Through June 3
Photo Courtesy of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Fruit, Flower, Object and Others is a contemplative art exhibition that highlights new photorealistic approaches to still life imagery in video, photography, painting and sculpture. Inherent to the still life genre is a focused quietude that is accentuated through patient attention to meticulous detail. The show not only includes classical still life subjects such as fruit, flowers and ceramic wear; artists also incorporate modern objects such as industrial machinery, scientific appliances and even a modern sit down toilet. The white fiberglass toilet, which appears to be no different than a conventional one, is actually a kinetic sculpture entitled The Toilette Seat by Liao Chien-chung (廖建忠). Yi Siuan’s (于軒) painted sculptures are imaginative laboratory appliances designed to preserve life in a fictional greenhouse. Song Sheau-Ming’s (宋曉明) minimalist paintings depict strips of duct tape on flat, monochromatic color plains. Such attention to detail offers an alternative view of the world and poetic space for interpretation. As the gallery quotes French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in a press release, “We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
■ Double Square Gallery (雙方藝廊), 28 Lane 770, Beian Road, Taipei City (台北市北安路770巷28號), tel: (02) 8501-2138. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 6:30pm
■ Through April 7
Photo Courtesy of Double Square Gallery
Taiwanese illustrator Chou Yi’s (周依) distinct drawing style is characterized by short dashes, curves and geometric shapes that make up a visual code for her idiosyncratic, metaphysical universe. Her compositions often suggest a sense of urban solitude and timelessness, depicting scenes of empty streets and elongated shadows or of lone women enjoying solitary activities. Town is the title of Chou’s latest book and exhibition currently hosted at Wildflower Bookstore. The show features the artist’s original drawings that are also included in the book. This body of work is inspired by the neighborhood in which she has lived in since she was a child. These streets and alleys that “quietly exist,” writes the artist in a statement, “makeup the landscape of my town.” By intermixing real and imaginative sceneries of her neighborhood, the artist seeks to create a new world from her personal perspective. Chou will be at the bookstore tomorrow for a book-signing event at 3pm. Contact the venue for further information.
■ Wildflower Bookstore (荒花書店), 1F, 7, Ln 69, Chengde Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市承德路一段 69 巷7號). Open Fridays to Mondays from 2pm to 10pm
■ Through March 26
Tomorrow, manga and illustration gallery d/art Taipei opens with a two-person exhibition entitled Contours of a Young Girl (少女的輪廓) by Japanese manga artist okama and Taiwanese illustrator VOFAN. Both artists are known for their skillful renditions of female anime characters. Okama prefers to use neon colors and elaborate contours to describe fine and delicate detail; his characters are often styled with unique costume designs. VOFAN’s illustrations are much warmer and painterly, relying heavily on manipulation of lighting. VOFAN owes his superb use of light to his passion for photography, through which he understands the techniques of illumination from the perspective of the camera lens. The exhibition shows a selection of works by both artists, including VOFAN’s Fu Cheng Hsiao Man (府城小滿), a fictional female college student that he created as a tourism mascot for the city of Tainan. For those interested in watching the artists at work, the gallery has scheduled two live drawing sessions tomorrow and Sunday afternoon.
■ d/art Taipei, 2F, 14 Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市武昌街二段14號2F), tel: (02) 2383-0060. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Through April 8
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