Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association (中華圓山畫會) is an art alliance founded by Hubei-born painter and educator Kuo Tao-cheng (郭道正). Growing up in China, Kuo studied under Tang Yi-he (唐一禾), one of the first generation Chinese artists who studied abroad in France. Kuo is known for his illustrious portraits of Taiwan that had won him numerous national awards throughout his lifetime. In 1990, the art association was borne at a time when Kuo’s painting tutorials at the Taipei Fine Art Museum were coming to a close. Through the association, his students were able to continue their studies with him. For the past 28 years, the association has been regularly organizing group exhibitions as well as educational activities that promote oil painting. This year, the annual Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association Joint Exhibition is held at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Featured artists span several generations, many of which have decades of painting experience and distinguished art practices. Collectively they identify with the tradition of plein air painting, impressionist color studies and a relatively conservative stylistic framework.
■ Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) 21, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山路21號), tel: (02) 2343-1100. Open daily from 9am to 6pm
■ Until July 24
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Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
Tao Hui (陶輝) is a Beijing-based artist who works in film and installation that explore issues of body, gender, race and cultural crises. His work often includes absurd and exaggerated scenarios that encourage viewers to reflect upon their own social identity, state of living and cultural heritage. Tao’s solo exhibition, The History of Southern Drama, Scene A, features the first of two stages from a new site-specific project that was conceptualized two years ago and finally realized this year during his recent residency at Chi-Wen Gallery. The project centers around a fictional character Lee Hsu-hua, an eldery Chinese woman who wrote a book about the historical relationship between China and Taiwan from the 30’s to 80s. The show involves objects, photographs and a filmed interview that reveals the lifestory of Lee and her biographical connections with the time of her writings. A series of photographs depict Lee as a young woman writing, reading and walking through domestic spaces. A Young Leng Shuihua No.1 shows Lee sitting at her writing desk against a picturesque window view of vibrant trees. The show also features an uncanny installation, Handwriting Machine, which involves a machine that appears to provide assistance to the writer’s body.
■ Chi-Wen Gallery (其玟畫廊), 32, Lane 2, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6, Taipei City (台北市中山北路六段2巷32號), tel: (02) 2837-0237. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 6pm.
■ Until Aug. 18
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Photo Courtesy of Chi-wen Gallery
Currently on view at Liang Gallery is a commemorative exhibition of oil paintings by Chen Chyan-Ming (陳前民), the second son of renown Taiwanese artist Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波). Chen Chyan-Ming passed away in 2016, leaving behind a large body of work. Chen enjoyed a late bloom in his artistic vocation; he only began painting after retirement: “[I]t was not until he touched the canvas that he realized that he had a sensitivity to color, depth of field and perspective,” writes the gallery in a press release. Chen also established the Xialin Painting Society, which held regular exhibitions throughout Taiwan. Many of Chen’s works feature images of famous places around the world, as well as landscapes he has personally visited. Hometown in Dreams depicts a luscious hill of trees reflected in a large body of water; a party of four sit along the waterside in leisurely engagement. Jiufe Si Guang Tan is a frontal view of a lively stream that is rushing down a descending pathway. “The painter’s rich emotions naturally integrated into artistic expressions… [reveal] a clear and pure taste of life,” writes the gallery.
■ 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
■ Until July 29
Photo courtesy of Chinese Yuanshan Painting Association
Semi Su (蘇紳源) is a Taipei-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between technology, nature and human behavior. He is especially interested in the complex connection between the virtual and real, and how this connection contributes to or contradicts the current conditions of human civilization. Su’s one-week solo exhibition, Neo Sanctum, at Haiton Art Center features an experimental project that involves algae cultivation using data technology. According to the artist, “[data is becoming] a new religion… Humans and machines create, consume, collect and process enormous amounts of data.” In the gallery space, eight jars of algae are placed in the order of a Taoist eight diagram, which maps a specific cosmological order based on the Taoist Book of Changes. A corresponding projection visualizes the process of algae growth. Viewers affect the gallery’s environmental conditions by linking their mobile phones to the WiFi signal in the space. A server collects data from WiFi users and translates the data in to commands that change the lighting in the room. Through this project, the artist explores ideas of alchemy, ecology and the coming arrival of super intelligence.
■ Haiton Art Center (海桐藝術中心) 2F, 75, Hami St, Taipei City (台北市哈密街75號2樓), tel: (02) 2559-6360. Open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 3pm to 9pm.
■ Until Monday
Photo Courtesy of Liang Gallery
In 1998, experimental theater group Riverbed Theatre debuted their first performance at Eslite Gallery. This year, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Riverbed, Eslite Gallery is hosting Dream Makers: Subconscious Theatre, a month-long program that involves a group art show, design workshops and theatre performances. The art show will open tomorrow with a display of works by nine members and collaborators of the group. The show includes paintings, sculpture, video and literary works that share an interest in the subconsciousness. Chang En-Tzu’s (張恩慈) Little Girls-1 is an embroidered narrative made with wool and fabric; the work depicts a collage of young girls superimposed with abstract clusters of thread. Hsu Yin-ling’s (許尹齡) Something Alive is an oil painting of a nude figure, with her back turned, posing against a domestic backdrop of bedroom furniture. Craig Quintero’s Food Fight #3 is a chromogenic print on aluminum that captures the moment that dried fruit and grains collides against the flesh of an anonymous body. During the exhibition period, viewers are also invited to collaborate with Riverbed’s design team every Tuesday and Saturday to produce the stage of Dream Makers, Riverbed’s new theater production scheduled to be performed near the end of the exhibition. For specific times, please visit the gallery Web site: estlitegallery.com.
■ Eslite Gallery (誠品畫廊), 5F, 11 Songgao Rd, Taipei City (台北市松高路11號5樓), tel: (02) 8789-3388. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until July 29
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Photo Courtesy of Haiton Art Center
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
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
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
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
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