American artist Ryan Greenly likes the simple stuff: a clean diet, meditation and escapes into nature. His latest pieces, on view at solo show Jack (我，一無所有), were made in his periods of quiet and lonely mental activity. Greenly has papered over walls with material he discovered alone: flowers and leaves, pages torn from books, news clips, photos, quotes and pastiche sketches based on memories of people. Through the collages, he tries to share his monastic moment with his viewers, yet implies also that it’s impossible to extricate completely from contemporary civilization.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Nov. 9
Photo courtesy of Taipei Artist Village
Over the Mountain (山外山) is a retrospective exhibition for Chou Ying (周瑛, 1922-2011), one of Taiwan’s founding print artists and educators. Chou is best-known for his Ode to Stone series, which uses an unusual frottage (rubbing) — instead of carving — technique to preserve the texture of the stone surface. The National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館) brings together 150 works including his most famous prints, as well as never-before-shown pieces like dark realist sketches he completed in China between 1939 and 1948. Chou left the artworks behind when he fled to Taiwan, and they were hidden for years by his brother for fear of political persecution.
■ National Museum of History, 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 Dec. 15
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Museum
Fresh Taiwan (文創國際拓銷特展) is an exhibition showcasing 70 of Taiwan’s best-selling products from the budding cultural and creative (文創) industry. Items include UID’s (桔禾創意) Dolly — a lamb-shaped coin bank with separate “lamb chops” for different currencies — and iHorn, an iPhone amplifier and recorder shaped like a vintage Taiwan-issued vinyl record. This catalog of items has entered markets of Tokyo, Paris, London and four other cities to commercial success, and is on display now as an example for local artists trying to break into a lucrative and growing market.
■ Taiwan Design Museum (台灣設計館), 133 Guangfu S Rd, Taipei City (臺北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2745-8199 ext. 379, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closed on Mondays, general admission: NT$50
■ Until Nov. 17
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Music Institute
Taiwan’s Grand Maestros (臺灣音樂憶像) is a memorial exhibition for Chang Hao (張昊), Kuo Chih-yuan (郭芝苑) and Chen Su-ti (陳泗治), late classical music composers who helped make Taiwanese music a genre. The show features their handwritten scores, letters and other personal items, as well as vintage posters, programs and newspaper coverage of their concerts. The exhibition includes free lectures and concerts of each composer’s works in Taipei on Nov. 10 and Greater Taichung on Nov. 22. To register or to learn more, visit www.tmi.ncfta.gov.tw.
■ Taiwan Music Institute (臺灣音樂館) at the National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心), 26 Hangzhou N Rd, Taipei City (臺北市杭州北路26號), tel: (02) 2341-1200, open Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 4:30, closed every first Monday of the month from 9am to 1pm
■ Opens Monday. Until Nov. 29
CM Leung (蔡敏亮) brings Hong Kong-style wedding photography to Huashan 1914 Creative Park for the Bounce Art Exhibitions (就是要跳藝術展), a series of month-long solo exhibitions that opened July 18. Leung works with live props such as ceremonial guards to create western, highly stylized scenes that border on the surreal. Last year, Leung was named a Top 10 Chinese photographer by Portrait Photography Magazine and a Top 30 Asian wedding photographer in Asia by Signature Wedding Magazine.
■ Red Brick Area (紅磚六合院), Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914文創園區), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號), tel: (02) 3322-3663, open Sundays to Thursdays from 11am to 7pm, Fridays and Saturdays from 11am to 8pm
■ Until Nov. 10
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
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
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
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