Each year since 2016, Galerie Nichido Taipei organizes a guest-curated group show that combines modern and contemporary art. This initiatives hopes to deepen the dialogue between different generations of art, writes the gallery in a press release. This year’s edition, curated by Wu Dar-kuen (吳達坤), is entitled Black Ships, Civilization, Remarks, and ______s’ Footprints: From Japanese Modern to East Asian Contemporary Art (黑船、文明,芻言和 _____ 的足跡:從近代日本到東亞當代藝術). According to the curatorial statement, the elaborate show title includes many keywords of modern East Asia that set the stage for a presentation of “multiple trajectories… cultural differences and ideas of the East Asian multitude in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Chang Li-ren (張立人) is a multimedia artist who creates video installations, conceptual project and animated films. His work is related to Jean Baudrillard’s philosophy, which discusses the collapse of reality and the imagination in an era of simulation. The late Hitone Noma was known for his luscious paintings of color and rhythm that often depict forest and ocean scenes. Korean artist and weaver Kim Soo-nim works in a variety of mediums — installation, sculpture, video, photography, performance and drawing — that draw from the histories of the many communities that she dwells in for a period of time.
■ Galerie Nichido Taipei (台北日動畫廊), 3F-2, 57 Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段57號3樓之2), tel: (02) 2579-8795. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Nov. 17
Photo Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
Paul Beumer is a Dutch-born artist who creates minimal, abstract paintings that the artist himself describes as “humble and simple in its forms.” At the core of his practice lies a fundamental question of “how to make a good painting?” which he continually reflects upon throughout his painting process. “One visual discovery flows into the other and constantly determines and changes the process,” writes the artist. His current show at Venue features recent works that are stained and dyed with red wine, soy sauce, tea and ink. The title, ‘He wanted kisses, but all he got was analytical anecdotes and philosophic epigrams.’ (他欲索吻,卻換來了人生故事和大道理。), is a quote taken from an early 20th century novel Point Counter Point by English writer Aldoux Huxley; it refers to “ideas and expectations hiding in a painting and how these exchanges tell the story of the works,” says the artist. Beumer’s works draw inspiration from Daoist mysticism, classical Chinese landscape painting and theories about Western abstract painting.
■ Venue (濕地), 10, Linsen N Rd, Taipei City (台北市林森北路107巷10號), tel: (02) 2542-9692. Open Daily from 11am-9pm
■ Until Sept. 24
Photo Courtesy of BlueRider Art
Currently on view at BlueRider Art’s Renai branch (藍騎士藝術空間仁愛館) is Munich-born artist Caro Jost’s solo exhibition, A Road to red, yellow and blue (追溯紅黃藍之路). “My work is about Time, Movement, Ephemerality and the unwinnable try to keep the moment for the eternity,” writes the artist on her Web site. She uses photography, drawing and cartographic recordings not for the sake of documentation, but rather for a process of abstraction that enables a dialogue between oneself and history. The works reflect on and reinterpret the archives of iconic Abstract Expressionist artists, such as Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Jost references memorabilia from different points in their careers, such as notebook sketches, invoices and receipts and translates these artifacts into wall-hung, multimedia objects that emphasize on the sourced materiality. Invoice painting B.N. February 8, 1956 is an epoxy print on an irregular-shaped canvas that monumentalizes ephemeral objects, such as a receipt addressed to the American artist Barnett Newman. Notes W.K. 1909 blue is another irregular wall piece of epoxy, resin, acrylic and digital silkscreen drawn from Russian painter Wassily Kadinsky’s archives.
■ 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 Nov. 24
Photo Courtesy of Open-Contemporary Art Center
Open-Contemporary Art Center (OCAC) presents PETAMU PROJECT, a group exhibition that seeks to open alternative ways of viewing maps. The show stems from OCAC’s ongoing engagements in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as curator Rikey Tenn’s initiative “No Man’s Land,” which organized artist residencies as well as research projects that involved translations and interviews in the region. In these projects, participating artists cultivated different visions that were then materialized into artistic projects based on different points on the Malay archipelago. “By reimagining the ‘window’ of different spaces as a reference to the ‘border’ on the map, the viewer can enter and exit different visualized contexts through the spatial interface,” Tenn writes. Jeffrey Lim (林猶進) is a Malaysian artist who works with a camera for silver printing photography. He captures the portraits of people as he moves through the city as well as more remote communities of indigenous tribes. For the PETAMU PROJECT Lim collaborates with fellow artist Posak Jodian, who both journeyed together throughout different sites in Taiwan, encountering disparate communities. “Together they tread through the rivers and the fields, hoping to summon the question on identity and culture,” Tenn writes.
■ Open-Contemporary Art Center (打開當代藝術中心), 25, Ganzhou St, Taipei City (台北市甘州街25號), tel: (02) 2552-0870. Opens Wednesdays to Sundays 2pm to 8 pm
■ Until Sept. 30
Photo Courtesy of Venue
Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art presents Minimalism & Sensibility ─ Exhibition of Tung Ho Steel International Artist Residency Program (低限命題.感性空間─東和鋼鐵國際藝術家駐廠創作展), a two-person sculpture exhibition by Lee Tsai-chien (李再鈐) and Kazuo Yuhara. The show is a presentation of works created by the two artists during their residency at Tung-ho Steel Factory in Miaoli. The residency program is organized by the Tung-ho Steel Culture Foundation and supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation since 2012. Each year the foundation invites a Taiwanese and foreign artist to work in the factory, where they are supported by professional equipment and personnel. Lee and Kazuo were resident artists last year at Tung-ho, and together in this exhibition they present 7 new, large-scale sculptures made from metal waste. The two artists share an affinity to the Western tradition of minimalism, which they combine with their own cultural backgrounds. Lee’s work involves H-beam structures that are reconfigured into creative forms. Kazuo incorporates different textural metal sheets and mesh to create contemplative spatial installations.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Oct. 28
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”
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
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