Double Square Gallery presents Fuse (影.暴.性), a video art exhibition that features diverse perspectives of the body. “Fuse” suggests a potential for ignition, a beginning point for discussions around issues concerning gender awareness, identity and power, popular culture and social violence. The show includes three artists and an artist group from Sweden, UK and Taiwan who share an interest in provocative use of image and sound. Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg are an artist duo who live and work in Berlin. They combine animation, sculpture and sound to create imaginative videos and installations about the desires of humans and animals. One Need Not be a House The Brain Has Corridors is a single channel digital film about the mistranslation between impulses and impressions. With a dose of dark comedy, the film rolls out some serious criticism about social doctrines, class hierarchies and the dominance of the human race.
■ 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 Sept. 21
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Ryoji Ikeda is a prominent Japanese visual and sound artist known for his live performances, installations, publications and recordings that explore concepts in music, mathematics, quantum mechanics, physics, philosophy and audiology. Ikeda, a self-taught artist, was exposed to a range of music at an early age. He experimented with ways to edit music, such as manipulating magnetic tape and sound frequencies, in search of fundamental questions about sound. While he spent several years in the 1990s committed to cross-disciplinary collaborations in theater and art, in 1995, Ikeda started focusing on creating minimalist electronic music that searched for the definition of sound. His latest solo exhibition, Ryoji Ikeda Solo Exhibition, is currently being shown at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館). The show includes a selection of iconic works from the artist’s career that demonstrate the potential of data and code language to respond to metaphysics and spirituality.
■ 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 Nov. 17
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院) opens a new show that sheds light on the museum’s document archives. Treasures from the National Palace Museum’s Collection of Qing Dynasty Historical Documents (院藏清代歷史文書珍品) features a selection of imperial decrees, official papers, memorandums, biographies, maps and illustrations that were once strictly confidential and closely guarded by the Qing imperial palace. These artifacts offer a glimpse into governmental operations, details of court life and other well-kept secrets about the emperor and his officials. The show includes a section that relates to the Qing’s rule over Taiwan. Official documents, maps and gazetteers show the court’s interest in the people, places, affairs and resources of Taiwan. Illustrations and Discourses on the Restoration of Official Buildings in the Prefecture of Taiwan is a colorful album depicting plans to repair architecture around the city proposed by Jiang Yuan-shu (蔣元樞), prefect of Taiwan during the 18th century.
■ ■ ■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 8:30am to 6:30pm; closes at 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays
■ Until Feb. 16
Photo Courtesy of Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts
Lin Yi-hsuan (林亦軒) has lived in New York and South America, and incorporates his experience of these places into abstract paintings, translating people and places into rough and delicate compositions. Lin’s solo exhibition, We Are Turtles (我們是烏龜), at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), presents a selection of new paintings from 2014 to this year. When speaking about his work, Lin uses the pronoun we, referring to himself and his companion turtle who is a metaphor for time. Inspired by American beat generation writer Jack Kerouac, Lin seeks to go beyond the surface of painting and to discover its meaning with a wandering, stumbling and nomadic attitude. Using methods akin to graffiti and collage, the artist mediates his daily encounters into symbolic gestures.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 X 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until Sept. 22
Photo Courtesy of Double Square Gallery
Huang Chia-ning (黃嘉寧) paints from small referential photographs. She depicts them faithfully, yet the size of the images provides limited detail. It is in this lack of clarity that the artist seeks to find expression. Huang’s choice of subject does not take a definite theme; she draws from different fragments of personal life and memories. Her solo exhibition, The Realistic Painting of Huang Chia-ning (如實知見), is currently on view at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館). In the show’s preface, Huang seeks to orient herself in the Information Age. “[I wonder] if the explosion of knowledge and information nowadays has made it more difficult for people to focus or acquire the right food for thought … [H]ow can an artist like me find the right food for thought and use it in the right way and in the right place,” she writes.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館), 80, Meishuguan Rd, Kaohsiung City (高雄市美術館路80號) tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm
■ Until Oct. 13
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
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
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