Taiwanese contemporary painters Hung Tung-lu (洪東祿) and Red Capsule (紅膠囊) personify their inner experiences with The Universe in Mind (一念萬象). Employing a visual style reminiscent of Japanese manga, the two artists explore the “tragedies and comedies” in their lives through the fictitious characters Little Red (小紅) and Dog Face Man (狗臉男).
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2536-2120
■ Until May 16
The Moment of Landscape — Paintings by Contemporary Chinese Masters (此景此情：大陸油畫名家寫生展) features 66 representational landscape oil paintings by 10 artists from China. In addition to displaying 56 of their earlier works, TFAM invited the participating artists to paint Taiwan’s landscapes and cityscapes, the results of which are also on view.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2595-7656
■ Until May 9
Taiwanese digital photographer Chen Wan-ling (陳宛伶) ponders the experience of travel in A Little Factory of Life (小生活工場). Chen’s images of people driving in cars or airplanes flying out of a vortex examine larger questions of human migration and the difference between the movement of the human body and that of the vehicles they create.
■ Der Horng Art Gallery (德鴻畫廊), 1 Jhongshan Rd, Tainan City (台南市中山路1號). Call (06) 227-1125 for a viewing
■ Until Sunday
The buildings and spaces of his native Xian preoccupy Chinese painter Wang Fenghua (王風華) in his solo exhibit at Gallery J. Chen. Instead of nostalgically resurrecting Xian’s rich archeological history, he depicts structures — apartment blocks, airports, train stations — that serve as symbols of modern life. Feng’s visual style — both in terms of its subtle shading and his emphasis on rectangles and squares rendered in a subdued palette — evokes David Hockney’s early Pop Art works.
■ Gallery J. Chen, 3F, 40, Ln 161, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段161巷40號3F). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2781-0959
■ Until May 9
Existential Emptiness (真空妙有) is a solo exhibit by Chinese conceptual photographer and video artist Cui Xiuwen (崔岫聞). Cui’s photographs, which have been collected by the Tate Modern Art Gallery and Pompidou Center, focus on the struggles of young women growing up in a rapidly modernizing China and the changing roles and relationships between women and men.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until April 25
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, presents an exhaustive retrospective of the work of world-renowned American photographer David LaChapelle. LaChapelle, who hit New York’s art scene in the early 1980s as a protege of Andy Warhol, has photographed many of American’s top celebrities — from Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie to Gene Simmons and Hugh Hefner — covering themes such as religion, war, celebrity and the environment. His peculiar and unmistakable style of staged photography is characterized by glamorous aesthetics and dramatic tension that some have called kitsch and others high art.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3720. Admission: NT$50
■ Until May 30
Last week, the the National Immigration Agency (NIA) told the legislature that more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) risked having their citizenship revoked if they failed to provide proof that they had renounced their Chinese household registration within the next three months. Renunciation is required under the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), as amended in 2004, though it was only a legal requirement after 2000. Prior to that, it had been only an administrative requirement since the Nationality Act (國籍法) was established in
Three big changes have transformed the landscape of Taiwan’s local patronage factions: Increasing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) involvement, rising new factions and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) significantly weakened control. GREEN FACTIONS It is said that “south of the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), there is no blue-green divide,” meaning that from Yunlin County south there is no difference between KMT and DPP politicians. This is not always true, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Traditionally, DPP factions are viewed as national entities, with their primary function to secure plum positions in the party and government. This is not unusual
The other day, a friend decided to playfully name our individual roles within the group: planner, emotional support, and so on. I was the fault-finder — or, as she put it, “the grumpy teenager” — who points out problems, but doesn’t suggest alternatives. She was only kidding around, but she struck at an insecurity I have: that I’m unacceptably, intolerably negative. My first instinct is to stress-test ideas for potential flaws. This critical tendency serves me well professionally, and feels true to who I am. If I don’t enjoy a film, for example, I don’t swallow my opinion. But I sometimes worry
US President Donald Trump’s bid to take back control of the Panama Canal has put his counterpart Jose Raul Mulino in a difficult position and revived fears in the Central American country that US military bases will return. After Trump vowed to reclaim the interoceanic waterway from Chinese influence, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an agreement with the Mulino administration last week for the US to deploy troops in areas adjacent to the canal. For more than two decades, after handing over control of the strategically vital waterway to Panama in 1999 and dismantling the bases that protected it, Washington has
RSS