Hsu Che-yu’s (許哲瑜) exhibit The Perfect Suspects (無姓之人) plays on the animated news of the Apple Daily and Next Media Animation. For Hsu, the “medium is no longer invisible, but an opaque intermediary faithfully transmitting the message,” where “an event becomes a product self-directed and self-acted by someone, a nameless character — the perfect suspects.” At the same time, his video and photography raise questions about the boundary between truth and fiction.
■ Digital Arts Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Opening reception and guided tour by artist on Saturday at 2pm. Until Oct. 23
Photo courtesy of Digital Arts Center
Yuan Goang-ming (袁廣鳴) examines what he sees as the temporal and positional registers of memory in Before Memory (在記憶之前), a solo exhibit at Tina Keng Gallery’s Neihu space. Working in video installation and photography, Yuan nostalgically recalls his childhood home, which serves as a starting point to expand on his ideas of place and remembrance. Yuan invites viewers along for the journey — one that enables us to explore our own pasts.
■ 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
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 6pm. Until Nov. 6
Photo courtesy of 99° Art Center
Return to Innocence (歸真) is a solo exhibit of oil paintings by Chen Hsien-tung (陳顯棟). Chen’s work celebrates the beauty of nature with fine, elegantly textured paintings rendered with perfectly proportioned blocks of color reminiscent of abstract expressionism. The lines, shapes and colors woven into the painting are natural forms that suggest Chen’s “uninhibited innocence.”
■ 99° Art Center (99度藝術中心), 5F, 259, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段259號5樓), tel: (02) 2700-3099. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Until Oct. 2
FIT: Fashionista in Taiwan (臺灣當潮時尚設計展) explores the broad range of Taiwan’s contemporary design styles and thinking under one roof, showcasing the country’s talent. The exhibit features work by veteran designers such as Jasper Huang (黃嘉祥) and Isabelle Wen (溫慶珠), as well as those like Chen Shao-yan (陳劭彥) and Liao Ying-yi (廖瑩怡), who now enjoy significant international attention.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: NT$50
■ Until Nov. 13
A Fable of Japanese Contemporary — Ten Sols brings together some of the hottest artists working in Japan, including Yayoi Kusama, Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami and Yoshitaka Amano. The media range from oil and acrylic painting to video installation and sculpture.
■ 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), tel: (02) 2711-0055. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Until Oct. 23
On the Edge Between History and Design — Exhibition of Taiwan’s 100 Years of Design (歷史與設計的交鋒 — 2011臺灣百年設計大展) is a poster exhibit timed to coincide with next month’s International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress. The exhibit is divided into three sections: Taiwan Poster Archives surveys the history of Taiwanese posters; Exhibition of Well Known Poster Designers presents a selection of posters related to culture, art and museums by international artists; and Design at the Edges contains 36 works from the forthcoming IDA. Combined, the exhibit aims “to provide a comprehensive view of the poster, past and present,” and to reveal the design link between Taiwan and the world.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: NT$30
■ Begins Friday. Until Nov. 13
Chiu Chien-ching’s (邱建清) ceramic sculptures fired in tones of ochre resemble the morphology of the rocks of the coast of Yilan where he grew up. With the Jialoushui Series (佳洛水系列), Chiu examines his relationship to the ocean and rocks by juxtaposing the motion of the former with the “solidified tranquility” of the latter.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yingge District, New Taipei City (新北市鶯歌區文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm, closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays
■ Until Oct. 2
Riverbed Theatre’s (河床劇團) Just for You exhibition at the Urban Core Art Block (城中藝術街區) consists of props, sets and video clips from the four plays in its Just for You festival, which was performed at Hotel Eight Zone (八方美學商旅) in Taipei last month.
■ Urban Core, 89-4, Zhonghua Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市中華路一段89-4號). Open daily from 12:30pm to 8:30pm
■ Until Oct. 2
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 In 1933, an all-star team of musicians and lyricists began shaping a new sound. The person who brought them together was Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉), head of Columbia Records’ arts department. Tasked with creating Taiwanese “pop music,” they released hit after hit that year, with Chen contributing lyrics to several of the songs himself. Many figures from that group, including composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), vocalist Chun-chun (純純, Sun-sun in Taiwanese) and lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) remain well-known today, particularly for the famous classic Longing for the Spring Breeze (望春風). Chen, however, is not a name
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