Eslite Gallery presents The Universe in a Grain of Dust (世界微塵裡), a retrospective of the late Taiwanese painter Lee An-cheng (李安成). Lee grew up around an elder brother who was keen on fostering an appreciation of the arts among his younger siblings. In their household, materials for painting and calligraphy were readily available, while Lee showed promising talent in both areas at an early age. Lee’s 1987 debut solo exhibition garnered considerable attention in ink art circles. Despite being trained in traditional techniques, Lee showed little interest in copying past styles and showed originality and modern spirit. He drew from his own lived experiences, including childhood memories and observations of his surrounding environment. Lee enjoyed a career of several stylistic phases, from early figures and landscapes works to later years of free, wild brushstrokes that express a sense of artistic freedom. The exhibition includes works entrusted by the artist to the gallery.
■ 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
■ Starts tomorrow. Until Oct. 13
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Over the last four years, Galerie Nichido Taipei has maintained an ongoing program of guest-curated shows that encourage deeper cultural exchange between Japan and Taiwan. A new show curated by Guo Jau-lan (郭昭蘭) opens tomorrow. Rotating Exploded View Diagram of Historiography (旋轉歷史編撰學的爆炸圖) is a group exhibition that seeks to present art in the context of a historical mapping. Referencing a schematic diagram style called exploded view, in which components are rendered in a deconstructed three dimensional model, Guo sees the exhibition as an analytical space where relationships and order are emphasized. Show highlights include Hotel Edgar Quintet, a painting of a Parisian hotel by prominent 20th century Japanese artist Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita. Taipei-based artist Au Sow-yee (區秀詒) presents an extension of her 2018 work, Nanyang Intelligence Bureau (南洋情報交換所) that focuses on power relations between Japan, Taiwan, countries of the ASEAN group and the politics that concern their surrounding seas.
■ Galerie Nichido Taipei (台北日動畫廊), 3F, 57, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段57號3樓), tel: (02) 2579-8795. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Starts tomorrow. Until Oct. 20
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Presently on view at Tina Keng Gallery is a solo exhibition by Lin Ju (林鉅). Lin is known for his distinct painting style that often shows obscure or mysterious symbols adapted from various world religions and myths. Flowing Reformation (九節拂風) draws its Chinese title from Buddhist breathing exercises that the artist practices, and involves nine cycles of breathing. This method is related to ideas of self-generation and immortality, a central theme in Lin’s artistic practice. “Twice I’ve come into this world,” he once said. “Chaotic the first time, estranged the second.” A selection of works inspired by Lin’s recent encounter of Sanyu’s (常玉) paintings last year at the gallery will be on display. These works are double sided, showing a painting on one side of the canvas and drafts and drawings on the other, which, when combined, reveal an intriguing process of thought and action.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm
■ Until Oct. 6
Photo Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Huang Hua-chen (黃華真) is a Taipei-based painter and lecturer whose recent works convey her spiritual contemplations based on the Christian faith. Her solo exhibition, In Wilderness: Beam Through the Dust (曠野的溫柔), at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum includes works that reference stories from the Old Testament. Huang examines biblical anecdotes to examine her own doubt, anger and fatigue, and how has art helped her mediate such periods of struggles and transformation.
■ 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. 3
Photo Courtesy of Tina Keng Gallery
Sera Chen (陳郁文) creates video installations, photographs and new media works that explore the dynamics and relationships between man, nature and society. Her solo exhibition, Everyday Fictionality: Beholding Shadows of Illusion (日常的虛構重建:虛與實的感知體系), features a video installation that reveals an interplay between readymade objects, virtual objects and appropriated objects, as well as an encounter between computer rendered realities and physical spaces. The show examines the changing definitions of nature, artificiality, reality and simulation.
■ 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. 3
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not