Zhan Wang (展望) is a prominent Chinese artist who creates visually captivating stainless steel sculptures and installations. Zhan is known for his metal recasts of gongshi (供石, scholar rocks), which have reflective surfaces that playfully mirror their surroundings. By reinterpreting traditional motifs with industrial material, he encourages viewers to take a different look at contemporary society and culture. Another significant body of work are his Urban Landscape (都市山水) installations, which consist of vast arrangements of domestic metal cookware laid out to resemble cityscapes. Zhan’s current solo exhibition, The Invisible (隱), features a selection of 20 works from different periods of his career, offering insights into his vast range of experiments and creative pursuits. The show includes one of Zhan’s earliest works, Mao Suit (中山裝軀殼), which consists of mannequins dressed in Mao uniforms. The show also features a new series of work entitled Forms in Flux (隱形), which involve the study of fluid dynamics with the use of 3D printing and algorithms. To create this series, forms are generated virtually before being materialized by machine. “The result is a fluid form of his granulated, morphed self,” writes the gallery in a press release.
■ 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 Feb. 17
Photo Courtesy of Nunu Fine Art
Presently on view at Nunu Fine Art is Northern Irish artist Rodney Dickson’s solo exhibition, The Paintings (畫作). The Brooklyn-based artist has worked with a variety of mediums, including installation, video, collage and performance. He finds painting to be the most challenging, “an intermediary of self-recording and self-reflection” that involves “condens[ing] time on canvas,” writes the gallery. For Dickson, painting is a natural process of renewal and decline in which he continuously adds and subtracts from thickly caked surfaces. His earlier works are characterized by bold brushstrokes that express “a kind of closed violence,” says the gallery, suggesting a tone of interrogation. In these paintings, “[the artist] does not allow anyone to dodge from [a kind of] strong and direct questioning.” By contrast, some of his later works are more spacious and flowing with light, as represented by the application of white paint and more open compositions. In 2015, Dickson participated in an artist residency in Taipei, where he created three-dimensional works inspired by the illumination of the city. The show features works from different periods of his career, as well as new paintings just completed this year.
■ Nunu Fine Art (路由藝術), 5, Ln 67, Jinshan S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市金山南路一段67巷5號), tel: (02) 3322-6207. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from noon to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 24
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
The Children’s Art Education Center of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum presents Not About Resemblance (無關像不像), a fun-filled show that seeks to demonstrate fundamental concepts of abstract art. Compared to more representational forms, abstraction focuses on materiality and formal explorations such as color, composition and creative behavior with no premeditation. The show features the work of three Taiwanese artists and includes recreations of their studio spaces as well as presentations of their works. Tsong Pu (莊普) is a renowned Taipei-based painter who creates meticulous grid paintings that create layered fields of poetic texture. The show encourages viewers to mimic the artist’s techniques by creating paintings with the use of square stamps. Hu Kun-jung (胡坤榮) is another representative abstract painter known for arrangements of color fields. The museum compares his painting process to balancing a seesaw, weighing proportions and relationships to achieve a sense of harmony. Emily Shih-chi Yang (楊世芝) is a prolific ink painter who employs painting and collage techniques to create bold and expressive landscapes that toe the line between representation and abstraction.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館 TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
■ Until April 14
Photo Courtesy of TFAM
Invalid Time/Space (失效的時-間) is a four-person show about artistic explorations of time and space. In the exhibition preface, curator Chen Hsiang-wen (陳湘汶) describes the role of artists “as magicians hiding in the dark” who offer an escape beyond conventional frameworks of reality. According to Chen, the artworks open up new sensual experiences by temporarily suspending our usual understandings of space and time. Chang Nai-jen’s (張乃仁) Rise and Circle the Mounds (起身繞著土丘) is a shamanic drum machine that beats without the need of a performer. The automated instrument carries out a ritual that is usually meant to mediate between the human and spirit worlds. Tsai Yi-ting’s (蔡宜婷) An endless history and its laws — Weightlessness is a kinetic sculpture that involves a rotating magnetic belt and a set of screws. The operation of this work is a commentary on the relationship between individual and society. Kou Tak-leong’s (高德亮) Coordinate series — Air conditioner (座標系列—空調系統) is a light installation that makes the flow of air visible by the use of laser beams. Lin Hsu-yu’s (林書瑜) Eclipse (蝕) uses a moving light source to explore the relationship between objects and illumination.
■ Digital Art Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180, Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Jan. 26
The Fourth Age of Man — Contemporary Art in Jinguashi (水金九礦山當代藝術展) is the first contemporary art exhibition hosted by the Gold Museum in New Taipei City’s Jinguashi (金瓜石). The museum, established in 2004, is situated on the grounds of the former Taiwan Metal Mining Corporation, a state-run business that once processed the gold and copper excavated from the area. Their activities ceased in the 1970’s with the draining of mineral resources caused by a long history of excavation. While the museum focuses its efforts on preserving and promoting the cultural heritage and history of Jinguashi, in the past it has also invited contemporary artists to participate in residency projects and carry out site-specific works. The present show features a selection of art projects that relate to the history of mining and its social impact on communities. Liu Yu’s (劉玗) Nameless (名字不為人所知) is a three-channel video installation that explores the personal histories of people involved in mining communities. These oral accounts attest to the lived experiences that are often sidelined by official narratives, according to the curatorial preface. Other exhibition highlights include the works of Chen I-chun (陳依純), Hsu Chia-wei (許家維) and Liao Chien-chung (廖建忠), which were commissioned by the museum.
■ New Taipei City’s Gold Museum (新北市立黃金博物館), 8, Jihu Rd, Taipei City (新北市瑞芳區金瓜石金光路8號), tel: (02) 2496-2800. Opens Mondays to Friday from 9:30am to 4:30pm, weekends from 9:30am to 5:30pm. Admission: NT$80
■ Until March 3
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
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
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and