Hsu Ming-jen (許銘仁) depicts the natural beauty and scenery surrounding Grass Mountain Village in his solo show On the Other Side of the Landscape (在風景的彼岸). Hsu says he used drawing as his medium in this series because it “illustrates my thoughts and observations for its direct and basic quality.” The clean and blurred lines of these images mirror the artist’s ideas about the monumentality of mountains and the mysterious landscapes that blanket them.
■ Grass Mountain Artist Village (草山國際藝術村), 92 Hudi Rd, Taipei City (台北市湖底路92 號). Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 10am to 4pm. Tel: (02) 2862-2404. Opens Saturdays at 11am
■ Until July 25
Taiwan’s fishing ports, farm scenes and village life are among the rich and vibrant landscapes seen in the retrospective exhibit of Chen Bo-wen (陳博文), The Beauty of Taiwan — A Memorial Exhibition of the Art of Chen Bo-wen (展現台灣風情 — 陳博文創作紀念展). In addition to Chen’s realist paintings, the exhibition includes sketches from his notebooks and extracts of writing that shed light on his artistic philosophy in a show that illustrates not only the artist’s achievements but also his profound love for his native land.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2361-0270. General admission: NT$30
■ Until July 25
Pale human heads emerging from the throat of verdant green frogs and an emaciated flying horse with its front half in the form of the torso of a naked woman are among the surrealist figures found in Japanese painter Tomohiro Takagi’s solo show Fur — Away. Takagi’s unusual and highly original paintings playfully depict the relationship between humans and nature, while also offering warnings about environmental destruction.
■ Elsa Art Gallery (雲清藝術中心), 3F, 1-1 Tianmu E Rd, Taipei City (台北市天母東路1-1號3樓). Open daily from 1pm to 7pm, closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Tel: (02) 2876-0386
■ Until July 18
Tripolar — 3 Positions in German Video Art presents six works by three German artists, Robert Seidel, Max Hattler and Daniel Burkhardt, working in video. The show attempts to map the characteristics of German video art and its evolution over the past several decades. The exhibition is also screening Taipei Impressions, a video meditation on the artists’ one-week sojourn to Taipei.
■ 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) 2552-3721. General admission: NT$50
■ Until July 18
Chinese-born German artist Zhang Qikai (張奇開) examines the perceived discordant relationship between East and West in Mr Panda’s Wonderland (Mr.熊貓的魔法時空). Employing China’s iconic panda as an emblem of the spiritual quest to find true meaning, Zhang’s realistic paintings juxtapose the materialistic aspirations of the West, symbolized, for example, by diamonds, dice and poker cards, with the spiritual longings of an artist far from home.
■ Metaphysical Art Gallery (形而上畫廊), 7F, 219, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段219號7樓). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm. Tel: (02) 2711-0055
■ Until June 30
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
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