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
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
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located