After this week’s art listings, the Taipei Times passes the paint brush to another colleague. Art is like storytelling and the struggle to create and tell stories — especially when the story you’re trying to tell goes against official narratives — is real. I’ve also met artists from other parts of Asia who say that they didn’t have the same degree of freedom back home as they do in Taiwan to create the art that they want.
My wish is for Taipei’s contemporary art scene to continue to grow and become internationally recognized, but more importantly, for artists to continue to have a democratic space to express themselves freely — and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of raunchy and tantalizing exhibitions over the past two-and-a-half years.
Many thanks to the artists, curators and gallerists who have taught me so much. Thanks for taking the time to share your stories and thanks for putting up with my Mandarin — though I like to think that good art transcends language barriers. Most of all, thanks to the readers who support this column and Taiwan’s artists by sharing these listings with their friends, attending exhibitions and spreading the word about Taiwan’s many wonderful artists.
Photo courtesy of Bluerider Art
Don’t let the hashtag and the spelling error put you off. #yourkiddingright is a satirical take on a society where “likes” on Instagram determines one’s worth. Held at Bluerider Art, the exhibition is Desire Obtain Cherish (DOC), a tantalizing series of installations by Jonathan Paul that explore topics such as sex, drugs and fame. The Los Angeles-based artist is known for employing dark and daring humor in his pop sculptures. His giant-sized lollipop sculpture, for instance, is meant to mimic the process of having a meltdown. DOC brilliantly captures the hollow pursuit of fame and materialism disguised as happiness.
■ Bluerider Art (藍騎士藝術空間), 9F, 25-1, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段25-1號9樓), tel: (02) 2752-2238. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 9am to 6pm
■ Until July 1
Photo courtesy of In River Gallery
Chinese artist Dong Dawei’s (董大為) signature blotchy, patchwork-like drawings started from an accidental ink stain on one of his earlier drawings. His latest solo exhibition, Visible Light (可見之光), which opens at Asia Art Center II tomorrow, will showcase a series of Dong’s pastel drawings that resemble bits of dust that seem simultaneously fluttering and stuck in place. Although Dong believes in letting materials take their natural course — which means letting ink leak and pastel smear on the canvas rather than trying to clean it up — there is also a certain tidiness and meticulousness to his work. Obviously, aesthetics still matter to Dong, but his message is clear: natural beauty is always better.
■ Asia Art Center II (亞洲藝術中心二館), 93, Lequn 2nd Rd, Taipei City (台北市樂群二路93號), tel: (02) 8502-7939. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6:30pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until July 1
Photo courtesy of Bluerider Art
Opening tomorrow at Nunu Fine Art is Paintings for Juliet (給茱麗葉的畫), a solo exhibition by Northern Irish artist Rodney Dickson. Although his paintings seem colorful and cheerful, Dickson’s work is influenced by memories of his childhood growing up during the Troubles. In particular, Dickson’s paintings explore the futility of war and his work has since expanded to include wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. Dickson lives and paints in his studio, a converted tobacco warehouse, because he doesn’t want to separate himself too much from his work. He slathers layers and layers of thick paint on canvas, a process that mimics human memory. Dickson will also be teaching a public drawing workshop on Sunday at 3pm at the gallery.
■ Nunu Fine Art (路由藝術), 5, Ln 67, Jinshan S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市金山南路1段67巷5號), tel: (02) 3322-6207. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from noon to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until July 9. Drawing class is tomorrow from 3pm to 6pm and admission is NT$400
Photo courtesy of Liang Gallery
Time Traveler (時空行者) will put viewers in a lulling state. The exhibition, which opens at In River Gallery tomorrow, features Liu Hsin-yi’s (劉信義) celestial-like paintings of skeletal people drifting in and out of natural backgrounds as well as Tu Sheng-chun’s (涂聖群) paintings of driftwood floating through galaxies. Crucial to both artists’ message is the idea that traveling is very much like wandering aimlessly. Not only do we tend to get lost when we’re traveling, but we’re also constantly thinking of our new surroundings and drifting further from what we know as our reality.
■ In River Gallery (穎川畫廊), 2F, 45, Renai Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路一段45號2樓), tel: (02) 2357-9900. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm
■ Opens June 3. Until July 5
Photo courtesy of In River Gallery
Belief / Relief (寄託／解脫) is an exhibition for the books. Opening at Liang Gallery on June 10, the exhibition will feature works by French artist Gabriel Desplanque inspired by his own travels to Taiwan as well as the book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) by French writer-turned-imposter George Psalmanazar. Before he claimed to be a native of Formosa (present-day Taiwan), Psalmanazar pretended to be an Irish pilgrim and Japanese heathen. Pretending to be from Formosa was his most elaborate hoax — he invented his own language and claimed that Formosans were polygamous and that men were entitled to eat their wives should their wives commit adultery. Obviously, Psalmanzara’s book is fabricated as he never stepped foot on Formosa. Desplanque’s sculptures, photography and drawings question the reliability of the travel narrative by distorting scale and perception. The result is a mix of familiarity and surreal. It is also a comment on human gullibility.
Installation artist and history buff Hsu Chia-wei’s (許家維) upcoming solo exhibition at Liang Gallery on June 10 will bring to light a previously under-explored piece of Taiwan’s history. Industrial Research Institute of Taiwan Governor-General’s Office (台灣總督府工業研究所) examines the industrial lab that was set up by the Japanese colonial government in the early 20th century. Its focus shifted during World War II when there was a need for rapid industrialization and production of weapons. Hsu uses a combination of video installation and archival materials to reveal a disturbing colonial past, questioning the human cost of Taiwan’s industrial capability.
■ Liang Gallery (尊彩藝術中心), 366, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路366號), tel: (02) 2797-1100. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm
■ Both exhibitions open June 10 and are until July 23
Crop damage from Typhoon Danas “had covered 9,822 hectares of farmland, more than 1.5 percent of Taiwan’s arable land, with an average loss rate of 30 percent, equivalent to 2,977 hectares of total crop failure,” this paper reported on Thursday last week. Costs were expected to exceed NT$1 billion. The disaster triggered clashes in the legislature last week between members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and China-aligned lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) argued that opposition lawmakers should take responsibility for slashing the Ministry of Agriculture’s (MOA)
Asked to define sex, most people will say it means penetration and anything else is just “foreplay,” says Kate Moyle, a psychosexual and relationship therapist, and author of The Science of Sex. “This pedestals intercourse as ‘real sex’ and other sexual acts as something done before penetration rather than as deserving credit in their own right,” she says. Lesbian, bisexual and gay people tend to have a broader definition. Sex education historically revolved around reproduction (therefore penetration), which is just one of hundreds of reasons people have sex. If you think of penetration as the sex you “should” be having, you might
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
As the world has raced to understand how Taiwan can be both the world’s most important producer of semiconductors while also the pin in the grenade of World War III, a reasonable shelf of “Taiwan books” has been published in the last few years. Most describe Taiwan according to a power triangle dominated by the US and China. But what of the actual Taiwanese themselves? Who are they? And should they have any say in the matter? Chris Horton’s Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival is perhaps the first general history of Taiwan to answer
RSS