Members of Art of Prospection (未來社), a Taipei-based artist collective, have come together to exhibit their paintings, videos and installations at Frees Art Space in an exhibition entitled Future Flash Fiction (未來的極短篇). Like the literary genre flash fiction, in which the plot is meant to be quick and snappy, the works displayed are more like windows into bigger pictures, rather than a portrayal of an entire story or a concept. The onus is on the viewer to piece together the message as quickly as possible. The exhibition is innovative in the sense that it cuts to the heart of gallery viewing, which is traditionally a long and contemplative process.
■ Frees Art Space (福利社), B1, 82, Xinsheng N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生北路三段82號B1); tel: (02) 2585-7600. Open Tuesdays to Fridays from 11am to 7pm, Saturdays 1:30pm to 9pm, closed Sundays and Mondays
■ Until Nov. 14
Photo courtesy of Metaphysical Art Gallery
Juin Shieh’s (謝鴻均) eerily beautiful paintings will be on display starting tomorrow at Taipei’s Mind Set Art Center. The Context of My Humble Life in Paintings and Drawings (來龍．去脈) serves not only as a visual autobiography, but also as a document of the life struggles of three generations of women — her daughter, herself and her mother. Domestic tasks such as gardening or walking the dog are transformed into gruesome and contorted images. Plants, bones and flesh are all intertwined inside a maze-like structure that could be interpreted as an umbilical cord. Yet despite the troubling nature of Shieh’s paintings, there’s still an undeniably feminine touch, which she achieves through the delicate curvature of each brush stroke, creating a seductive complexity that pulls the viewer in.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術), 16-1, Xinsheng S Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生南路三段16-1號), tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 2pm to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Nov. 21
Photo courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
Following their propensity to feature artists with minimalistic, contemplative styles, Project Fulfill Art Space’s latest exhibition will display Sean Wang’s (王璽安) dainty paintings of objects or sceneries seen from a distance. Entitled The Edgeless Edge (片之中是無垠), the exhibition explores dreamy states such as unlimited boundaries or finite vastness, and is inspired by questions such as: How vast is the sky? How many buildings are there in the city we live in? Wang takes both a macroscopic and microscopic approach to painting. When seen from afar, his depictions appear simple and alluring with carefree brushstrokes and pastel colors. But from up close, textures and dimensionality become more apparent.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Nov. 21
Photo courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
The Digital Art Center in Taipei is currently featuring Wu I-Yeh’s (吳宜曄) avant-garde (i.e. discordant) video-sound art. Studies in Perception (感知習作) includes a series of Wu’s multi-channel videos that play with our perception of action and noise. For instance, although an object may be crashing, the sound of the impact isn’t heard until much later. Wu maintains that the world is one big illusion, something which digital technology has only served to obfuscate — the person hiding in the TV might be an illusion, but does that make us any more “real”? Such questions are raised in this exhibition.
■ Digital Art 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
■ Until Nov. 22
Japanese artist Chiharu Nishizawa’s latest exhibition, Wonderland (夢奇地), which opens tomorrow at Taipei’s Metaphysical Art Gallery, will focus on dreams. Despite the bright colors and whimsy feel, don’t expect the exhibition to be like a ride down the magical river in “It’s A Small World” at Disneyland. Far from that, Nishizawa’s artwork serves as a satirical jab at problems that plague Japanese society — most notably materialism, pollution and hectic work schedules. His convoluted, asymmetrical paintings of masses of people trapped in bizarre, comical situations — climbing vertical mazes or sharing a tender moment when a fighter jet drops a couple of bombs — is simply his way of depicting all that is wrong with the world. As Nishizawa once said, “Modern people exhaust themselves living in the real world they have no control of.” Way to put a damper on this beautiful fall season.
■ 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) 2771-3236. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Nov. 29
Outspoken artist Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁), whose track record includes underground performance art during the Martial Law era and criticizing the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for using the term “inappropriate” to describe some of his works displayed there, is back with a new exhibition at The Cube Project Space in Taipei. Do not let the academic-sounding exhibition name — The Bianwen Book: Images, Production, Action and Documents of Chen Chieh-jen (變文書—陳界仁影像、生產、行動與文件) — put you off. If there’s anyone who knows how to take history, convert it into video art and make it appealing, it’s Chen. The exhibition will display a series of single channel videos inspired by lesser-known historical incidents in Taiwan. Realm of Reverberations, for instance, takes an in-depth look at the history of Losheng Sanatorium, a hospital for lepers in New Taipei City’s Xinzhuang District (新莊) which was constructed in the 1930s.
■ The Cube Project Space (立方計畫空間), 2F, 13, Alley 1, Ln 136, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段136巷1弄13號2樓), tel: (02) 2368-9418. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 2pm to 8pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 10
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