Michael Ku Gallery is currently holding a solo show, Love Wholeheartedly. Amour (好好戀愛), by Taiwan artist Jian Yi-hong (簡翊洪). Jian is an award-winning painter known for his delicate ink drawings that are characterized by minimal, flowing contours and playful narratives of contemporary life. He appropriates conventions of traditional Chinese painting with modern sensibilities to create an original, hybrid aesthetic. Male nudes often appear as a subject; some of his works are based on personal experience, while others represent his fantasies of love, says the gallery, and the show features a selection of new works that explore desire and intimacy. The title of the exhibition is based on an entry in Jian’s personal journal last summer that reads: “Love wholeheartedly. One day I’ll push you out and under the sun!” His passionate proclamation suggests the paintings are in part autobiographical. Hot Dance (熱舞) depicts two nude men dancing. The accompanying calligraphic text expresses feelings of separation and bitterness. The Office (辦公室) explores power dynamics between employer and employee.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until March 10
Photo Courtesy of Double Square Gallery
NO ON (事故) is a solo exhibition by Joyce Ho (何采柔), which is on view at TKG Plus. Ho works between painting, sculpture and theatre, and is a seasoned scriptwriter and theatre director. The Chinese and English exhibition titles do not directly correspond in meaning but share a similar quality of wordplay. Ho’s work ponders daily life and examines the intimate yet distant relationships between people and realities. Her work often leads the viewer into deconstructed quotidian scenarios presented as ritualized spaces. The show features a number of objects and images that together weave a dramatic narrative. From moments of tenderness, gripping tension, emptiness and interpretation, the artist is particularly interested in liminal moments.
■ TKG+ Projects, B1, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until April 28
Photo Courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
Hanna Pettyjohn is a Filipino-American artist who works and lives in the Philippines and the US. She identifies herself as part of the diaspora, possessing a transnational identity; this cultural positioning is critical to how she perceives her own past and the histories of immigration. Born into a family of ceramicists, Pettyjohn works in sculpture and painting to explore issues of alienation, loss and anxiety. She often draws from her memories, which leads her to reflect on the transient nature of life. Her solo exhibition, Concurrencies, at Mind Set Art Center features a selection of portraits of female immigrants and porcelain sculptures. Each picture shows the outline of a woman’s face, which is juxtaposed with background imagery drawn from her homeland and current residence, and is distinguished by different styles of lighting, color and contours “to give every unique story a [unique] voice,” writes the gallery.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術) 108, Heping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市和平東路108號) , tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 6pm
■ Begins tomorrow; until March 29
Photo Courtesy of Micheal Ku Gallery
Chen Ching-yao (陳擎耀) is a Taipei-born painter and photographer committed to the deconstruction of power and symbols. Chen draws inspiration from Japanese and Korean popular culture, borrowing familiar symbols from mass media and placing them into playful scenarios. By use of satire, the artist seeks to downplay the symbols of power by exposing their absurd nature. Chen’s solo exhibition, AK Girls and Panzer, at Double Square Gallery presents new large-scale paintings of himself, famous political leaders and an army of girls modeled after the famous Japanese idol girl group AKB48. “Human beings create gods for everything, including gods in politics… If I become [a god], Girls’ Generation would become my entourage whereas AKB48 would serve as my personal guard,” writes the artist in the exhibition preface. The girls are dressed in white shirts and short uniform skirts, poised in moments of combat and play. Dear Leaders (親愛的領導) are a series of paintings that examine the culture of mythologizing political figures in various Asian countries. National Geographic Channel (國家地理頻道) is a body of paintings that imitate the dramatic formats of popular adventure TV programs.
■ Double Square Gallery (雙方藝廊), 28, Lane 770, Beian Road, Taipei City (台北市北安路770巷28號), tel: (02) 8501-2138. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 6:30pm
■ Until April 6th
Photo Courtesy of d/art Taipei
MUNASHICHI (六七質) is a Japanese artist who works between illustration, animation and game design. As an illustrator, MUNASHICHI creates exuberant, maze-like pictures of city streets, factories, abandoned sites and towering metropolises. ANDAERφ is the artist’s debut illustration monograph that includes a selection of works produced in the last eight years. An exhibition of original illustrations from the publication is currently on view at d/art Taipei.
■ d/art Taipei, 2F, 14 Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市武昌街二段14號2F), tel: (02) 2383-0060. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Begins tomorrow; until March 24
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would