The first edition of the Yilan-based art festival, Parallax 2017 (映像節), debuts with a repertoire of site-specific projects, audio-visual installations, performances and a screening program of short video, animation and experimental film. The festival is hosted in the former Chungshing Paper Mill (中興紙工廠), an abandoned paper factory that operated since the Japanese colonial era until it closed down in 2000. The festival’s curatorial framework ties closely with the context of ruins, and explores the concept of a zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, and its process of preservation and damage over time. Headlining the cross-disciplinary program is Ryoji Ikeda’s larger-than-life digital installation Data.Flux powered by 12 projectors and loudspeakers. Ikeda is known for creating works with clean aesthetics and mathematical precision that speak to the nature of sound and image. Stories About Weather by Hong Kong’s Lee Kit (李傑) is a site-specific installation made of video and readymade objects based on the artist’s surveillance of the installation process of an art project that appears in the same show. Another highly anticipated project is Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel (鬼丘鬼鏟) art collective’s simulation of a fictional museum event that occurred 100 years ago. For this work, online registration is required for specific viewing times that are randomly assigned by a lottery system.
■ Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園) 6-8, Zhongzheng Rd Sec 2, Wujie Township, Yilan County (宜蘭縣五結鄉中正路二段6-8號) , tel: (03) 969-9440. Opens Thursdays to Tuesdays from 10am to 6pm and Saturdays from 10am to 8pm.
■ Until Dec. 10
Photo Courtesy of IT Park
Chen Wei-yi’s (陳偉毅) solo exhibition Pristine Scintillation (淳縷芳澤) is a luscious display of photorealistic lacquer paintings and jewelry boxes that feature plants and flowers characteristic of Taiwan’s natural habitat. For years, the artist specialized in lacquer painted objects until 2013, when he began painting on flat surface. Chen uses cashew lacquer, an oil-based paint originating from Japan. The material takes days to dry, which sets up a patient rhythm to his painting process. The images of plants, composed as meticulously rendered still-lifes, are depicted against a mysterious black background that glimmers with the natural reflection of lacquer. The painting Camouflage (保護色) is a humorous piece that shows a green feathered bird hidden in a leafy branch. Shell-flower (月桃心領) captures a flower in bloom that extends itself outward from a cluster of leaves. One of the leaves is broken and possibility eaten by predators, sporting edges that are brown and dry. In other pieces, the artist has chosen the theme of banana groves, which are commonly seen around his hometown in Nantou County.
■ Caves Art Center (敦煌藝術中心), 91, Fujin St, Taipei City (台北市富錦街91號), tel: (02) 2718-2091. Opens Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 7pm.
■ Until Dec. 10
Photo Courtesy of Cave Art Center
Taiwanese artist Chen Ching-yuan (陳敬元) is known for painting fantastical, anecdotal scenes from grim, timeless other worlds that speak to the state of human existence. His solo exhibition, The Spider on Ship (船上的蜘蛛), at IT Park Gallery presents a series of recent paintings created during his residency at Glenfiddich brewery in Scotland, where he was greatly inspired by the natural scenery, the many ancient legends and myths and the companionship of other resident artist friends. The title of the exhibition is a metaphor for the artist’s current state of mind. He says he sees his creative process as weaving an ongoing “script that plays on and on of the past, the present and the future.” Chen intuitively takes text and images from history, combines myth and facts and creates pictorial narratives that lure the viewer into a space of deep contemplation. Across the River, The Flower Still Growing depicts three pairs of legs in traditional Scottish stockings and leather shoes, entangled in a competitive moment of kicking around two skulls. Grail is a back-turned profile of a naked man balancing a pile of plates on top of his half-developed head. White With Shadow shows a suited man kneeling beside a seated woman, concealing her face with his tall hat, as if telling her a secret.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F, 41, Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2 樓), tel: (02) 2507-7243. Opens Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 9pm.
■ Until Dec. 30
Photo Courtesy of Parallax
Then and Now: Modern and Contemporary Photography in Taiwan (彼時此刻—台灣近現代寫真) is a display of photographs from the collection of the National Museum of History in Taipei that traces the culture of photography and its record of society in Taiwan. Photography was first brought to Taiwan by the Japanese in the 19th century. The show begins with official and journalistic photographs that were created during the Japanese colonial era, then extends into images of common folk and everyday life after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) takeover. There is also a special section dedicated to photographic documentation of the museum’s architectural transformation and surrounding changes in the last century. Under Japanese rule, the museum was set up as the display hall for agriculture. The building once featured distinct Japanese characteristics, which were later renovated into Ming and Qing Dynasty palace styles by the KMT. The show throws back to times when photography was not as accessible and common as it is now, framing the art of image-making in a local context.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Opens Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
■ Until Jan. 7
The Taipei Art Awards, organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, is a juried competition that begins with an open call process and results in one Taipei Art Award recipient, one Audience Choice Award recipient and 13 finalists who together present their works in a group exhibition. This year’s Taipei Art Award (台北藝術獎) exhibition is held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. The award recipient Wang Yu-Song’s (王煜松) multi-media project Hualian White Lighthouse is inspired by a lighthouse in his hometown that he had read about, but never seen. According to the artist, he later learned that the lighthouse had been blasted apart and thrown into the sea to expand the Hualian harbor. Wang set off on a metaphorical journey to find the lighthouse, walking along its alleged location and carrying a steel piece of it into the sea. Also included in the exhibition is Wu Chi-Yu’s (吳其育) 15-minute, two-channel film Nose-dive, which takes the context of the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis as its departure point to explore its impact on Taiwan’s destiny.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
■ Until Feb. 4
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
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