Currently on view at Galerie Grand Siecle is Taiwanese artist Su Tsu-han’s (蘇子涵) solo exhibition, The Latent Scene. Su works in sculpture, printmaking and painting, and through these mediums she creates narratives that explore the concept of a city as one organic machine. She is particularly interested in human relationships, living spaces and the urban lifestyle that make up an integrated city system. The exhibition features a selection of three-dimensional models and paintings that reflect on city architecture, domestic spaces and the urban way of life. The artist strives to “explore the possibilities … for people to live among both nature and artificial objects,” writes the gallery in a press release. Highlights include Raise Plants, a long scroll of over-sized caged trees and potted plants that dot the banks of a vertical canal. Home Swimming is a minimalist sculpture in the shape of a milk-carton plated on a bamboo board. On the side of the carton is an image of two people swimming along parallel pool aisles. Refining to Make You More Beautiful features a picture of a bonsai tree and a pair of scissors painted on the silhouette of a milk carton.
■ Galerie Grand Siecle (新苑藝術), 1F, 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1樓), tel: (02) 2578-5630. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until June 15
Photo Courtesy of VT Art Salon
The Repose Between Each Journey is a joint exhibition by Taiwanese photographer Liu Yun-yi (劉芸怡) and painter Liao Zen-ping (廖震平). The show revolves around the artists’ experiences living in foreign lands and how they respond to the social and historical context of their surroundings. Over the years, Liu has visited Kinmen many times, photographing its abandoned buildings from different perspectives and collaging them into one seamless image that embodies multiple points of reference and a layered sense of space and time. She considers photography as a trace of its captured subject, a sampling of place and things that are approaching extinction. Her work, Landscaping from History—The Falling Bunker I, shows a fragment of a bare cement building situated on a shore, as if fallen from a cliff that stands in the background. Liao Zen-ping’s work is less focused on the historical context of his place of living; through his daily observations of his foreign surroundings, he searches for connections and associations to Taiwan. He finds solace in his neighborhood park, observing its changes through the seasons, and the splendor of the ocean and mountains. Through these mini-travels he finds a sense of freedom and his personal way of journey through space and time. Triangle Trees is realist oil painting on linen that features the silhouette of a towering tree against a brilliantly blue sky.
■ Gaiart (㮣藝術), 9-4, Pucheng St, Taipei City (台北市浦城街9之4號), tel: (02) 2363-2000. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 1:30pm to 7pm
■ June 10
Photo courtesy of Sincere Art Gallery
Silverpoint Drawing is a solo exhibition at Bluerider Art by Florida-based artist Carol Prusa. Prusa works in sculpture, drawing and installation and is known for her silverpoint drawings on dome-shaped acrylic hemispheres. Silverpoint is a 14th-century European drawing technique that involves dragging a silver rod across a prepared surface. Prusa takes this traditional method and combines it with graphite, white pigment and fiber optics to create heavily labored-over surfaces associated with cosmological phenomena and artistic visions of the universe. “The detailed lines and grids networking across each piece reference cellular systems, weather patterns or maps, and are combined with proliferating botanical and biological shapes,” wrote ArtEconomist Magazine in 2011. In her Taipei exhibition, Prusa presents a new series of monochromatic paintings inspired by her experience of a solar eclipse, which she interprets as a state of “being caught between day and night,” the gallery writes in a press release. Crescent is a circular drawing styled with ornate patterns on the outer ring; the inner ring appears to be a gray, textured surface that is slowly lifting to reveal the darkness underneath. Sol Niger is a more minimalist drawing of a black circle defined by smoky edges.
■ Bluerider Art (藍騎士藝術空間), 9F, 25-1, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段25-1號9樓), tel: (02) 2752-2238. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 9am to 6pm
■ Until July 7
Photo courtesy of Sincere Art Gallery
Lee Hung-tai (李宏泰) is a Taiwanese painter who primarily works in oil paints and lacquer. His extensive academic resume shows a wide scope of studies, including western art history, painting, and photography. As a PhD candidate at the National Taiwan Normal University, Lee has developed a strong interest in lacquer painting. His current exhibition, En Promenade, at Sincere Art Gallery features 31 works that utilize oil paint, gold leaf and lacquer. The title of the exhibition refers to the state of walking or strolling, as suggestive of an impression of leisure that sets the lyrical mood to the show. According to the gallery’s pamphlet, the exhibition “features subject matters of landscape, nature and negligible things experience during states of movement.” Mundane and often overlooked scenes of common landscapes are highlighted, “leading to a heightened awareness of interest and revealed beauty,” writes the gallery. Plant-life decorated with insects, reptiles and amphibians are presented as diptych panels, while animals of larger variety are featured predominantly on single boards. Some of his diptychs are curiously titled with classical European music terms, such as Andante Vivace, Liberal Tempo I and Largo, which add an interesting layer of interpretation to the painted pictures.
■ Sincere Art Gallery (致誠空間), B1, 10, Alley 7, Ln 113, Mingsheng E Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市民生東路113巷7弄10號B1), tel: (02) 2719-1870. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until tomorrow
Photo Courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Project Fulfill Art Space, the gallery has invited curator Huang Chien-hung (黃建宏) to organize Voir la in Time Zones, a three-part program of special exhibitions to reflect on the role of art spaces and the production of art. The second exhibition of the program will open this Saturday, featuring the most recent work of Chen Sung-chih (陳松志). Chen is an award-winning Taiwanese artist whose work often involves sculptural assemblages and explorations of daily life narratives drawn from his own life and society. The show, A Fork in the Road, presents a spatial installation made of a variety of materials, including synthetic fabric, carpet, carbon powder, sound and Chen’s personal items. “The work continues the artist’s exploration of how forms disintegrate in time and space…and the cyclic regeneration of meanings and purposes,” writes the gallery in a press release. In addition to the works on view, three voice recordings of Huang’s curatorial text are present in the gallery. These recordings will be edited by the artist and a final text will be released by the gallery on June 9. For more information please visit the gallery’s Web site: projectfulfill.com.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Until June 16
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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