Crossover (跨越) is a group exhibition of contemporary painting from Japan. Ai Yamaguchi draws on the pictorial aesthetics of the Edo period for a series of paintings depicting girls who possess a tough physical exterior and facial expressions of sublime equanimity; Nobuaki Onishi’s surreal canvases present a different perspective on daily objects such as wine glasses and light bulbs; Marefumi Komura’s paintings represent those living in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, combining realistic techniques to portray emotional scars; and Youhei Sugita’s expressionist impasto works, which draw on his memories.
■ 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 tomorrow at 3pm. Until March 31
Photo Courtesy of Aki Gallery
Scenes (現場) is a solo exhibition of photographs taken by Yang Tian-sying (楊天行) at the KLM aircraft maintenance hangar in Amsterdam. In these large-scale images, Yang curiously avoids the monumentality of the spaces used to repair aircraft, and instead, and somewhat morbidly, focuses on aircraft parts and components, which are scattered throughout the hangar’s vastness. The arbitrary arrangement of the objects suggests an accident. Yang will give a talk at 4pm on Sunday.
■ Fotoaura (海馬迴光畫館), 2F, 83, Chenggong Rd, Tainan City (台南市成功路83號2樓), tel: (06)222-3495. Open Wednesdays to Sunday from 1pm to 8pm
■ Opening reception on Sunday at 3pm. Until April 7
Photo Courtesy of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
The relationship between the gallery visitor and their viewing behavior underpins a joint exhibition of work by South Korean artists Je Baak and Kim Yeon. Je’s Circular Reasoning series turns the viewer into an active participant, asking viewers to re-interpret Piet Mondrian’s works as presented through this artist’s perspective. In another series, Je examines the two emotions commonly found in amusement parks — fear and happiness — through collage. Yeon uses leaves, gravel, resin, stainless steel and other materials to question the viewer’s perspective of nature. This includes work from his Waterfront series, which displays falling leaves on water in autumn, as well as the Voyage to the Light series, which creates a shimmering water surface through the refraction of stainless steel. There will be an artists talk tomorrow at 3pm before the opening reception, which begins at 4:30pm.
■ MOT Arts, 3F, 22, Fuxing S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市復興南路一段22號3樓), tel: (02) 2751-8088. Open daily from 11:30am to 8pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 4:30pm. Until April 14
Photo Courtesy of MOT/Arts
Half Century of Glass Art (黑木國昭50年玻璃藝術) is a retrospective exhibition on the work of respected Japanese glass artist Kuniaki Kuroki. Kuroki combines Western glass-making techniques with a personal style that is based on Japanese aesthetics. The displayed works demonstrate a complex working process, with the glass being treated in a variety of ways and adorned with inlaid leaves of gold and platinum, in keeping with the tradition of Japanese lacquer work.
■ 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. General admission: NT$30
■ Until March 31
Taiwanese celebrities, rural landscapes and foreign locales are among the subjects Hsieh Chun-te (謝春德) has photographed over his 50-year career. Slight Touch (微光行), a retrospective exhibition, also displays Hsieh’s new installation. The museum will also show Men and Women in Fluxus (合而不流：FLUXUS五十周年紀念特展), an exhibit based on the art movement popular in Europe and America in the 1960s. Under the leadership of George Maciaunas, the movement featured John Cage, Yoko Ono, Paik Nam June, Joseph Beyus and many other artists from different countries. As one of the 20th century’s most important avant-garde art, the Fluxus movement is marked by anti-authority, anti-art and anti-aesthetics spirit, asserting that there is no difference between art and life. The museum will display more than 350 works of this movement, giving a full representation of this vital movement that has a profound influence on contemporary art.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Slight Touch runs until May 25. Fluxus starts on March 16 and runs until June 2
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
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