Mountain — Muchi Hsieh Solo Exhibition (山 — 謝牧岐個展) is a test in speed. Hsieh Mu-chi (謝牧岐) believes a painter should be able to rapidly capture scenes around him, much in the way of a Polaroid photographer. His results, on show now at the Fotoaura Institute of Photography (海馬迴光畫館), are realistic yet mythical likenesses of mountains rendered in bold flashes of color and rushed strokes. Hsieh is recipient of the Kaohsiung Award (高雄獎) from the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art and the Taipei Arts Award (台北美術獎).
■ Fotoaura Institute of Photography (海馬迴光畫館), 2F, 83 Chenggong Rd, Greater Tainan (台南市成功路83號2樓), tel: (06) 222-3495. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm; closed Mondays and Tuesdays
■ Until June 2
Photo courtesy of Lin & Lin Gallery
Rush hour at the Taipei MRT gets hectic. Some of the stranger things passengers have misplaced in the stations are dentures, electric pots, bicycles, baby strollers (minus the babies) and wheelchairs. On display at the underground Zhongshan Metro Mall, Usual Suspicion (日常懸案) reminds commuters to keep their wits about them and their belongings at hand. Five local artists were each asked to dress a mannequin based on one commonly lost item.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA Taipei, 台北當代藝術館), Exit R9, Taipei Metro Zhongshan Station, tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open daily from 11am to 8pm
■ Until Aug. 4
Photo courtesy of Lin & Lin Gallery
A Room of One’s Own is a group exhibition based on Virginia Woolf’s essay of the same name, which says a woman “must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊) brings together four women in their early thirties — Wang Liang-yin (王亮尹), Kao Ya-ting (高雅婷), Tsai Yi-ting (蔡依庭) and Huang Chia-ning (黃嘉寧) — whose work is eclectic but shares a bent for gender subversion. In Turtle (烏龜), Huang adopts a queer angle to make the title subject secondary and bring to the fore light, shadows and the flow of the water. Tsai is here with her Red Portrait (紅色肖像), faces that are twisted and almost repellant, but soften at a second glance.
■ Lin & Lin Gallery (大未來林舍畫廊), 16 Dongfeng St, Taipei City, (台北市東豐街16號), tel: (02) 2700-6866. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Sunday
Photo courtesy of MOCA Taipei
Tokyo native Soichiro Mihara devises ways to let viewers experience phenomena that are typically invisible at The World Filled with Blanks — Soichiro Mihara Solo Exhibition. The work uses digital technology and social media — microchips, sensors and Twitter — to draw attention to physical phenomena such as radiation, air and water pressure. The artist completes his residency at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館) this month, but his work stays on show until July 7.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2893-8870. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until July 7
Are you a reader of Parkett? The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館) brings the international, Zurich-based art magazine to life with Parkett — 220 Artists Editions & Collaborations Since 1984. Walk through the Studio, Playroom, Wardrobe, Reading Room, Garden and City, each furnished with themed essays and art pieces from Parkett’s publication history. The exhibition also includes artist lectures in English with Chinese interpretation. Founded in 1984, Parkett made a name for itself with the “Parkett x Artist” model used to create each volume. The magazine selects three to five international artists as curators, who then call on other artists to contribute essays, select images, design spines and create special 10 to 12 page inserts.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Zhongshan Dist, Taipei City, (臺北市中山區中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656
■ Until Aug. 25
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and
RSS