Showing “fashion in a new light, an X-ray light,” British photographer Nick Veasey collaborates with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum to create life-size X-ray images of its vintage fashion collection. The museum collection, which spans five centuries, claims to be the largest and most comprehensive archive of its kind. To photograph the garments, Veasey built a mobile X-ray room to operate within the museum facilities. Working together with the museum curators, the images are first captured on film and processed before being translated into a digital image. Veasey has experimented with X-ray photography for over 20 years and considers the medium a combination between science and art. “X-ray reveals what, and often how, things are made. It is an honest scientific process,” he says. A selection of these photographs will be on view at Veasey’s solo exhibition Hidden Visions at Bluerider Art. The show includes images of a delicately embroidered 17th century pair of gloves, an 18th century silk and linen dress worn by aristocratic women and a mid-20th century evening dress by the legendary Spanish designer Balenciaga. Catch this rare chance to inspect vintage fashion with forensic detail.
■ 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 Dec. 30
Photo Courtesy of Digital Art Festival Taipei
Veteran artist Han Hsiang-ning’s (韓湘寧) solo exhibition Flying Through Time and Space at Moon Gallery includes 41 works that span the prolific painter’s expansive career since 1971. The show is not a comprehensive, large-scaled retrospective of the artist’s work, yet it provides an intimate glimpse into Han’s artistic endeavors over the past three decades. As a member of Taiwan’s Fifth Moon Group (五月畫會) in the 1960s, Han began his career with explorations in abstract painting and printmaking, drawing inspiration from old Chinese objects and engraved tablets. After migrating to New York several years later, the impact of a different artistic climate sent him on a different trajectory and propelled him to introduce themes of everyday life into his paintings. Han is known for using spray paint to depict street scenes and landscapes that appear to look photorealistic, and yet are pictorial investigations influenced by Georges Seurat’s pointillism. The process involves an arduous and repetitive method of tracing, masking and spray painting onto canvas. One of Han’s iconic works, River Loop in New York (紐約環河) from 1971, renders a soft, minimal sight of the Hudson River in a dense mist of white light. In one of his most recent works, Self-Portrait in Dali’s Sunshine (大理陽光自畫像), the same distant and slow sense of time captivates the viewer in a moment of halting contemplation.
■ Moon Gallery (月臨畫廊), 6, Lane 589, Yingcai Rd, Taichung City (台中市英才路589巷6號), tel: (04) 2371-1219. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6pm (closed every last Sunday of the month).
■ Until Sunday
Photo Courtesy of Paloma Chang
The 12th Digital Arts Festival Taipei, curated by Sappho Loh (駱麗真), is an exhibition of digital arts that promotes a special focus on artistic collaboration and public engagement. “We encourage all participants to be more than just viewers and actively engage in the art festival through digital art and artworks,” says Loh. Although the theme of the show “Conflux Infinity — Collaboration Now & Forever” seems romantically inclined and positions itself to be more promotional than critical, the exhibition nevertheless features strong works from international and local artists that push the boundaries of digital art. Youki Hirakawa’s eight-channel installation Ice Circle involves a narrative of eight German boulders that references the time of the Ice Age and our ongoing relationship with nature. Wu Ping-sheng (吳秉聖) and Zhang Xu-zhan’s (張徐展) Space in Space explores the idea of death and ceremony through audio-visual experience and virtual reality.
■ Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), 133 Guangu S Rd, Taipei City (台北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2578-5467. Opens 10am to 8pm.
■ Until Sunday
Photo Courtesy of bluerider gallery
Wu A-sun (吳炫三) is a prominent Taiwanese artist known for his abstract expressionistic work that draws heavily from the visual language of primitivism. Throughout his career, Wu has traveled to experience different cultures in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. His journeys have inspired a distinct interpretation of the visceral energy embodied in tribal art. Wu’s current solo exhibition at Sunnyart Museum (名冠藝術館) features over 70 paintings and sculptures that speak to the theme of masks. “Masks have always possessed a special attraction to me. No matter from what culture or of what form, masks inspire a passion in me to create art,” he says. According to Wu, masks are one of the earliest forms of art and perhaps the closest art expression to everyday life. His sculptures and paintings are often richly colored and feature maze-like patterns painted on flat surface or carved into wood. The Scream (吶喊) is an elongated shape with a concaved mouth that suggests the simple expression of a howl. With Green Face and Ferocious Fangs (Avoid Evil God) (青面獠牙 避邪之神) is attributed with spiritual powers and sports a mesmerizing face of green and white patterns. While both works date from recent years, the show includes works from different periods of his career.
■ Sunnyart Museum (名冠藝術館), 95 Jhongsiao St, Jhudong Township, Hsinchu County (新竹縣竹東鎮忠孝街95號), tel: (03) 595-2515. Opens Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 8pm.
■ Until Dec. 23
Photo Courtesy of 61 NOTE
Tottori Exhibition (鳥取展) is an arts and culture show that offers a taste of Tottori (鳥取), a southern, seaside prefecture of Japan. While the prefecture is often promoted as home to spectacular sand dunes, the show features a selection of photography, crafts and local products that highlight the region’s distinct natural scenery and artistic heritage. Artist Hideaki Hamada’s photographs capture Tottori in its ever-changing weather. In these images, rain, mist, wind and sky create various impressions of the land. Also on view is the beautiful craftwork of Shoya Yoshida, whose locally made ceramic plates and vases are painted with a distinct glaze of green, white and black. Local food products, such as specialty cakes and locally mixed coffee beans, are available for purchase.
■ 61Note, 6, Alley 10, Ln 64, Nanjing S Rd, Taipei City (台北市南京西路64巷10弄6號), tel: (02) 2550-5950. Opens Tuesdays to Wednesdays from 12pm to 10pm, Thursdays to Sundays 11am to 10pm.
■ Until Nov. 26
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
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