Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association (中華圓山畫會) is an art alliance founded by Hubei-born painter and educator Kuo Tao-cheng (郭道正). Growing up in China, Kuo studied under Tang Yi-he (唐一禾), one of the first generation Chinese artists who studied abroad in France. Kuo is known for his illustrious portraits of Taiwan that had won him numerous national awards throughout his lifetime. In 1990, the art association was borne at a time when Kuo’s painting tutorials at the Taipei Fine Art Museum were coming to a close. Through the association, his students were able to continue their studies with him. For the past 28 years, the association has been regularly organizing group exhibitions as well as educational activities that promote oil painting. This year, the annual Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association Joint Exhibition is held at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Featured artists span several generations, many of which have decades of painting experience and distinguished art practices. Collectively they identify with the tradition of plein air painting, impressionist color studies and a relatively conservative stylistic framework.
■ Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) 21, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山路21號), tel: (02) 2343-1100. Open daily from 9am to 6pm
■ Until July 24
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Tao Hui (陶輝) is a Beijing-based artist who works in film and installation that explore issues of body, gender, race and cultural crises. His work often includes absurd and exaggerated scenarios that encourage viewers to reflect upon their own social identity, state of living and cultural heritage. Tao’s solo exhibition, The History of Southern Drama, Scene A, features the first of two stages from a new site-specific project that was conceptualized two years ago and finally realized this year during his recent residency at Chi-Wen Gallery. The project centers around a fictional character Lee Hsu-hua, an eldery Chinese woman who wrote a book about the historical relationship between China and Taiwan from the 30’s to 80s. The show involves objects, photographs and a filmed interview that reveals the lifestory of Lee and her biographical connections with the time of her writings. A series of photographs depict Lee as a young woman writing, reading and walking through domestic spaces. A Young Leng Shuihua No.1 shows Lee sitting at her writing desk against a picturesque window view of vibrant trees. The show also features an uncanny installation, Handwriting Machine, which involves a machine that appears to provide assistance to the writer’s body.
■ Chi-Wen Gallery (其玟畫廊), 32, Lane 2, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6, Taipei City (台北市中山北路六段2巷32號), tel: (02) 2837-0237. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 6pm.
■ Until Aug. 18
Photo Courtesy of Chi-wen Gallery
Currently on view at Liang Gallery is a commemorative exhibition of oil paintings by Chen Chyan-Ming (陳前民), the second son of renown Taiwanese artist Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波). Chen Chyan-Ming passed away in 2016, leaving behind a large body of work. Chen enjoyed a late bloom in his artistic vocation; he only began painting after retirement: “[I]t was not until he touched the canvas that he realized that he had a sensitivity to color, depth of field and perspective,” writes the gallery in a press release. Chen also established the Xialin Painting Society, which held regular exhibitions throughout Taiwan. Many of Chen’s works feature images of famous places around the world, as well as landscapes he has personally visited. Hometown in Dreams depicts a luscious hill of trees reflected in a large body of water; a party of four sit along the waterside in leisurely engagement. Jiufe Si Guang Tan is a frontal view of a lively stream that is rushing down a descending pathway. “The painter’s rich emotions naturally integrated into artistic expressions… [reveal] a clear and pure taste of life,” writes the gallery.
■ 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
■ Until July 29
Photo courtesy of Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association
Semi Su (蘇紳源) is a Taipei-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between technology, nature and human behavior. He is especially interested in the complex connection between the virtual and real, and how this connection contributes to or contradicts the current conditions of human civilization. Su’s one-week solo exhibition, Neo Sanctum, at Haiton Art Center features an experimental project that involves algae cultivation using data technology. According to the artist, “[data is becoming] a new religion… Humans and machines create, consume, collect and process enormous amounts of data.” In the gallery space, eight jars of algae are placed in the order of a Taoist eight diagram, which maps a specific cosmological order based on the Taoist Book of Changes. A corresponding projection visualizes the process of algae growth. Viewers affect the gallery’s environmental conditions by linking their mobile phones to the WiFi signal in the space. A server collects data from WiFi users and translates the data in to commands that change the lighting in the room. Through this project, the artist explores ideas of alchemy, ecology and the coming arrival of super intelligence.
■ Haiton Art Center (海桐藝術中心) 2F, 75, Hami St, Taipei City (台北市哈密街75號2樓), tel: (02) 2559-6360. Open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 3pm to 9pm.
■ Until Monday
Photo Courtesy of Liang Gallery
In 1998, experimental theater group Riverbed Theatre debuted their first performance at Eslite Gallery. This year, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Riverbed, Eslite Gallery is hosting Dream Makers: Subconscious Theatre, a month-long program that involves a group art show, design workshops and theatre performances. The art show will open tomorrow with a display of works by nine members and collaborators of the group. The show includes paintings, sculpture, video and literary works that share an interest in the subconsciousness. Chang En-Tzu’s (張恩慈) Little Girls-1 is an embroidered narrative made with wool and fabric; the work depicts a collage of young girls superimposed with abstract clusters of thread. Hsu Yin-ling’s (許尹齡) Something Alive is an oil painting of a nude figure, with her back turned, posing against a domestic backdrop of bedroom furniture. Craig Quintero’s Food Fight #3 is a chromogenic print on aluminum that captures the moment that dried fruit and grains collides against the flesh of an anonymous body. During the exhibition period, viewers are also invited to collaborate with Riverbed’s design team every Tuesday and Saturday to produce the stage of Dream Makers, Riverbed’s new theater production scheduled to be performed near the end of the exhibition. For specific times, please visit the gallery Web site: estlitegallery.com.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 29
Photo Courtesy of Haiton Art Center
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
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
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