Homunculus (人造人) is a group exhibit by seven artists who employ painting as a medium to contemplate the changes in how people are depicted in the age of digital media.
■ A Gallery (一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm. Tel (02) 2702-3327
■ Until May 30
Painter Lu Hsien-ming (陸先銘) deconstructs the colors and shapes of contemporary city life with Urban Memoir (城市隨筆). Whereas Lu’s earlier work focused on monumental constructions such as overpasses or skyscrapers — as well as the machines: tractors, cement trucks and steamrollers that help give shape to a city — this series adds the people, rendered in a hyper-realist style, who inhabit and construct these environments.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 13, Ln 252, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段252巷13號). Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 10am to 7pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2721-8488
■ Until May 30
Sakshi Gallery celebrates its first anniversary with an exhibition showcasing contemporary art from India by artists born between 1950 and 1980 and working in painting and installation. Ranbir Singh Kaleka’s realist paintings depict objects in perplexing tableaus that border on the surreal. Rekha Rodwittiyaj’s large-scale paintings of women resemble the thematic concerns of Gauguin portrayed with bold coloring and outlines reminiscent of Matisse. Sunil Gawde explores perception and reality through multimedia installations. Hema Upadhyay combines self-portraits with exotic patterns. Other artists include sculptor Jitish Kallat, whose is represented by Saatchi Gallery, and the artistic duo Thukral & Tagra, who work in video, sculpture and painting.
■ Sakshi Gallery (夏可喜當代藝術), 33 Yitong Street, Taipei City (台北市伊通街33號). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1:30pm to 9:30pm, Sundays from 1:30pm to 7:30pm. Tel: (02) 2516-5386
■ Until May 30
While Sakshi celebrates its first anniversary, Cathay United Art Center is holding a 10th Anniversary Exhibition. The group show brings together 25 emerging artists working in different genres of oil painting — realism, impressionism and abstract expressionism — and sculpture, particularly the female form.
■ Cathay United Art Center (國泰世華藝術中心), 7F, 236 Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路236號7樓). Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2717-0988
■ Until June 12
Contemporary artist Emily Yang (楊世芝) continues her examination of abstract painting informed by Chinese calligraphy and landscape with Disorderly in Order (斷變之間). Expanding on themes developed in her 2007 show, Unconventional Strokes (筆墨可以橫著走), Yang seeks to build her frenetic paintings around a simple line.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm.
Tel: (02) 2507-7243
■ Until June 5
Travel Forever brings together four contemporary Japanese photographers who document their travels both at home and abroad. Naoki Honjo captures cities from a bird’s-eye perspective while Akiko Ikeda focuses in on minute details — strangers, birds and mailboxes — that she encounters on her travels, which she then folds into three-dimensional objects. Naoya Okazaki offers a bizarre perspective on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, while Hiroshi Ono’s photos of Amsterdam offer a humorous look at the city.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2599-1171
■ Until May 30
This is the final week of Gold and Glory: The Wonders of Khitan From the Inner Mongolian Museum Collection (黃金旺族:內蒙古博物院大遼文物展), a special exhibit at the National Palace Museum that presents intricately carved artifacts, many made from silver and gold, from the Khitan, a tribe of nomads that virtually disappeared around the 13th century. [A review of the show can be found on Page 15 of the Feb. 10, 2010, edition of the Taipei Times.]
■ 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). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm, open until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2881-2021. Admission: NT$250 (free admission for children under 115cm)
■ Until Sunday
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National
RSS