Zhan Wang (展望) is a prominent Chinese artist who creates visually captivating stainless steel sculptures and installations. Zhan is known for his metal recasts of gongshi (供石, scholar rocks), which have reflective surfaces that playfully mirror their surroundings. By reinterpreting traditional motifs with industrial material, he encourages viewers to take a different look at contemporary society and culture. Another significant body of work are his Urban Landscape (都市山水) installations, which consist of vast arrangements of domestic metal cookware laid out to resemble cityscapes. Zhan’s current solo exhibition, The Invisible (隱), features a selection of 20 works from different periods of his career, offering insights into his vast range of experiments and creative pursuits. The show includes one of Zhan’s earliest works, Mao Suit (中山裝軀殼), which consists of mannequins dressed in Mao uniforms. The show also features a new series of work entitled Forms in Flux (隱形), which involve the study of fluid dynamics with the use of 3D printing and algorithms. To create this series, forms are generated virtually before being materialized by machine. “The result is a fluid form of his granulated, morphed self,” writes the gallery in a press release.
■ 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 Feb. 17
Photo Courtesy of Nunu Fine Art
Presently on view at Nunu Fine Art is Northern Irish artist Rodney Dickson’s solo exhibition, The Paintings (畫作). The Brooklyn-based artist has worked with a variety of mediums, including installation, video, collage and performance. He finds painting to be the most challenging, “an intermediary of self-recording and self-reflection” that involves “condens[ing] time on canvas,” writes the gallery. For Dickson, painting is a natural process of renewal and decline in which he continuously adds and subtracts from thickly caked surfaces. His earlier works are characterized by bold brushstrokes that express “a kind of closed violence,” says the gallery, suggesting a tone of interrogation. In these paintings, “[the artist] does not allow anyone to dodge from [a kind of] strong and direct questioning.” By contrast, some of his later works are more spacious and flowing with light, as represented by the application of white paint and more open compositions. In 2015, Dickson participated in an artist residency in Taipei, where he created three-dimensional works inspired by the illumination of the city. The show features works from different periods of his career, as well as new paintings just completed this year.
■ Nunu Fine Art (路由藝術), 5, Ln 67, Jinshan S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市金山南路一段67巷5號), tel: (02) 3322-6207. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from noon to 7pm
■ Until Feb. 24
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Photo Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
The Children’s Art Education Center of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum presents Not About Resemblance (無關像不像), a fun-filled show that seeks to demonstrate fundamental concepts of abstract art. Compared to more representational forms, abstraction focuses on materiality and formal explorations such as color, composition and creative behavior with no premeditation. The show features the work of three Taiwanese artists and includes recreations of their studio spaces as well as presentations of their works. Tsong Pu (莊普) is a renowned Taipei-based painter who creates meticulous grid paintings that create layered fields of poetic texture. The show encourages viewers to mimic the artist’s techniques by creating paintings with the use of square stamps. Hu Kun-jung (胡坤榮) is another representative abstract painter known for arrangements of color fields. The museum compares his painting process to balancing a seesaw, weighing proportions and relationships to achieve a sense of harmony. Emily Shih-chi Yang (楊世芝) is a prolific ink painter who employs painting and collage techniques to create bold and expressive landscapes that toe the line between representation and abstraction.
■ 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 April 14
Photo Courtesy of TFAM
Invalid Time/Space (失效的時－間) is a four-person show about artistic explorations of time and space. In the exhibition preface, curator Chen Hsiang-wen (陳湘汶) describes the role of artists “as magicians hiding in the dark” who offer an escape beyond conventional frameworks of reality. According to Chen, the artworks open up new sensual experiences by temporarily suspending our usual understandings of space and time. Chang Nai-jen’s (張乃仁) Rise and Circle the Mounds (起身繞著土丘) is a shamanic drum machine that beats without the need of a performer. The automated instrument carries out a ritual that is usually meant to mediate between the human and spirit worlds. Tsai Yi-ting’s (蔡宜婷) An endless history and its laws — Weightlessness is a kinetic sculpture that involves a rotating magnetic belt and a set of screws. The operation of this work is a commentary on the relationship between individual and society. Kou Tak-leong’s (高德亮) Coordinate series — Air conditioner (座標系列—空調系統) is a light installation that makes the flow of air visible by the use of laser beams. Lin Hsu-yu’s (林書瑜) Eclipse (蝕) uses a moving light source to explore the relationship between objects and illumination.
■ Digital Art Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180, Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Jan. 26
The Fourth Age of Man — Contemporary Art in Jinguashi (水金九礦山當代藝術展) is the first contemporary art exhibition hosted by the Gold Museum in New Taipei City’s Jinguashi (金瓜石). The museum, established in 2004, is situated on the grounds of the former Taiwan Metal Mining Corporation, a state-run business that once processed the gold and copper excavated from the area. Their activities ceased in the 1970’s with the draining of mineral resources caused by a long history of excavation. While the museum focuses its efforts on preserving and promoting the cultural heritage and history of Jinguashi, in the past it has also invited contemporary artists to participate in residency projects and carry out site-specific works. The present show features a selection of art projects that relate to the history of mining and its social impact on communities. Liu Yu’s (劉玗) Nameless (名字不為人所知) is a three-channel video installation that explores the personal histories of people involved in mining communities. These oral accounts attest to the lived experiences that are often sidelined by official narratives, according to the curatorial preface. Other exhibition highlights include the works of Chen I-chun (陳依純), Hsu Chia-wei (許家維) and Liao Chien-chung (廖建忠), which were commissioned by the museum.
■ New Taipei City’s Gold Museum (新北市立黃金博物館), 8, Jihu Rd, Taipei City (新北市瑞芳區金瓜石金光路8號), tel: (02) 2496-2800. Opens Mondays to Friday from 9:30am to 4:30pm, weekends from 9:30am to 5:30pm. Admission: NT$80
■ Until March 3
In 1990, Amy Chen (陳怡美) was beginning third grade in Calhoun County, Texas, as the youngest of six and the only one in her family of Taiwanese immigrants to be born in the US. She recalls, “my father gave me a stack of typed manuscript pages and a pen and asked me to find typos, missing punctuation, and extra spaces.” The manuscript was for an English-learning book to be sold in Taiwan. “I was copy editing as a child,” she says. Now a 42-year-old freelance writer in Santa Barbara, California, Amy Chen has only recently realized that her father, Chen Po-jung (陳伯榕), who
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
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