Tai Han-hong’s (戴翰泓) latest solo exhibition, Creating Engineering (營造工程), held at VT Art Salon, is a series of installations that use timber, a medium he chose because of its close relationship to nature and humans. It’s the sheer simplicity of the medium that Tai is drawn to, though his miniature staircases are intricately carved. Some of the staircases lead to nowhere, symbolizing the innate human need to always be searching for something, regardless of how abstract or seemingly meaningless it is.
■ VT Art Salon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 47 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街47號B1), tel: (02) 2516-1060. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 1:30pm to 9pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 1:30pm to 10pm
■ Until June 25
Photo courtesy of Carol Christie
If there is anyone who can make lines on paper look sexy, it’s Chinese artist Qin Yifeng (秦一峰). The Shanghai-raised Qin, who has his first solo exhibition, Line & Field (線 — 場), in Taiwan, was a calligrapher before branching out into other mediums such as acrylic paint, pencil and charcoal. In the early 90s, he started his Line Field series by painting colorful three-dimensional cubes composed of many intertwining lines and toying with the concept of space, or rather, the illusion of space. In the 2000s, Qin stopped painting cubes and started painted more two-dimensional planes with not just straight lines, but, get this — curved lines too.
■ 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
■ Until July 2
Photo courtesy of TFAM
Between (間/之間) is a duo exhibition at Taipei’s A Gallery by artists Lin Yen-hsin (林衍馨) and Wang Po-cheng (汪柏成), both of whose artwork explores the murky state of in-between-ness by traversing themes such as real vs imaginary, static vs dynamic and, of course, East vs West. Lin’s fragile ink paintings of minute leaves and flowers made to look like little squiggles are both tranquil and emotive. Wang, on the other hand, uses a darker color palate to create his minimalistic paintings which blend Western abstractionism with Chinese calligraphy.
■ A Gallery (當代一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Lane 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號), tel: (02) 2702-3327. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until July 2
Photo courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
Dawn Chen-ping’s (董振平) latest solo exhibition, Limbo (懸念 — 鄰薄獄), is not for the light-hearted. Held at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, it showcases Dawn’s paintings of beautifully grotesque creatures, which are meant to symbolize the innate evil that, according to ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi (荀子). Dawn also draws inspiration from Catholic theology, Buddhism and the Chinese Zodiac. Dawn’s creatures exist in a space between the mortal and spirit realms, going about life in a state of limbo. It’s all pretty cool stuff if you can stomach the imagery and appreciate the beauty in ugliness.
■ 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) 2896-1000 X 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Until July 7
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
New Zealand artist Carol Christie is drawn to colorful images, which she recreates her own manner on canvas. Having relocated to Taiwan, Christie paints and draws in a variety of mediums, including acrylic, pastel and collage. Her paintings of potted flowers, inspired by the gardens she used to tend while living in New Zealand, are both cool and intense, with a palate that ranges from deep red to pale lavender. Christie also dabbles in a kind of abstraction that could be described as typhoon abstract. With Into the Blue and Green, the bright impasto brush strokes of red, yellow and orange in the foreground violently thrust towards the more subdued blues and greens in the background. As she writes, “There is tension and tussle as you try to control the materials but in the end you must surrender to color, the push and pull and the way it sings.” Her solo exhibition, Diving In, is at Cafe Vergismeinnich.
■ Cafe Vergismeinnich, 92, Aiguo E Rd, Taipei City (台北市愛國東路92號), tel: (02)3322-3036. Open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 12pm to 9pm, Fridays from 12pm to 12am, Saturdays from 11am to 12am and Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until July 31
Photo courtesy of A Gallery
Nanjing-born, Taiwan-educated artist Ho Kan (霍剛) has a career spanning six decades. Ho’s artwork not only different mediums, but it also draws influence from various artistic movements, both East and West. He co-founded the Ton Fan Art Group (東方畫會) in 1955 to promote abstract art, thus rebelling against accepted art forms of the time. Ho dabbled in surrealism in his earlier works of birds and beasts, while colors and lines came to dominate his canvas in the mid-1960s when he moved to Italy. The geometric abstraction in his work grew more pronounced in recent decades. A selection of his artworks from the 1950s to the present day is currently on display in the show, Reverberations (寂弦), at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館 TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays
■ Until Aug. 7
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,