Never Ending Construction is a group exhibition by three Japanese artists working in installation and painting. The paintings of Reika Nakayama, who resides in Mexico, feature a background of vivid, colorful patterns in acrylic paint, to which she has added dynamic pencil drawings of animals and human figures. Sakae Ozawa creates a playful world of little girls in billowing dresses flirting with flying whales and dancing bears. Paramodel, an “art unit” comprising Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano, transforms the gallery space with their large installations comprising flowing lines and abstract geometric patterns.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until March 4
Photo Courtesy of Aki Gallery
Polyphony Beat (複音。節拍) is a dual exhibition of paper sculpture by Chu Wei-bor (朱為白) and Mia Liu (劉文瑄). The show seeks to show viewers the diversity and range of contemporary paper sculpture.
■ Kalos Gallery (真善美畫廊), 269, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段269號), tel: (02) 2836-3452. Open daily from 10am to 6:30pm, closed Sundays
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until March 3
Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Book From the Sky to the Ground (從天書到地書) is a retrospective exhibit on the work of Chinese artist Xu Bing (徐冰). Xu’s installations question the notion that meaning can be communicated through language and how written words and symbols can be manipulated. In 1999, he received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award for his originality and contribution to printmaking and calligraphy.
■ 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 X1588. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Opening reception on Saturday at 3pm. Until April 1
Wonderland: New Contemporary Art From Australia is a wide-ranging exhibition that surveys art from Down Under. The 45 artworks by 24 artists include found objects, sculpture, documentary video, painting and interactive installation. The “richly illustrated catalogue,” says MOCA’s press blurb, brings together “22 prominent critics to introduce the historical and cultural contexts within which each artist has evolved their practice.”
■ 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. General admission: NT$50
■ Opening reception on Friday from 7pm to 9pm. Until April 15
In Girls — Spring (女孩春), Isa Ho (何孟娟) explores the traditional and (often) constricting roles of women in Taiwanese society and females’ quests for self-expression. Ho views her new series of photographs, which are shot from a bottom up perspective so that the viewer is constantly focused on the sky, as an “escape from the perspectives and values of seeing.”
■ InArt Gallery (加力畫廊), 315 Youai St, Tainan City (台南市友愛街315號), tel: (06) 221-3638. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm
■ Until March 11
Turning a Blind Eye (再見不尋常小事) is a joint exhibit of video and drawing by three Taiwanese artists. The videos of Chang Li-ren (張立人), winner of the 2009 Taipei Arts Awards (臺北美術獎), meditate on the changing ideas of beauty through images of women culled from Western art history. Lin Guan-ming’s (林冠名) drawings examine the estrangement of humans from the natural environment, which he views as a peculiar aspect of industrial and urban societies. Huang Hai-hsin (黃海欣) assembles news media images in videos that blur the line between fiction and reality.
■ Agora Art Space (藝譔堂), 104, Ln 155, Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路155巷104號), tel: (02) 8712-0178. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until March 17
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick, has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on Maverick, takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
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