Michael Ku Gallery is currently holding a solo show, Love Wholeheartedly. Amour (好好戀愛), by Taiwan artist Jian Yi-hong (簡翊洪). Jian is an award-winning painter known for his delicate ink drawings that are characterized by minimal, flowing contours and playful narratives of contemporary life. He appropriates conventions of traditional Chinese painting with modern sensibilities to create an original, hybrid aesthetic. Male nudes often appear as a subject; some of his works are based on personal experience, while others represent his fantasies of love, says the gallery, and the show features a selection of new works that explore desire and intimacy. The title of the exhibition is based on an entry in Jian’s personal journal last summer that reads: “Love wholeheartedly. One day I’ll push you out and under the sun!” His passionate proclamation suggests the paintings are in part autobiographical. Hot Dance (熱舞) depicts two nude men dancing. The accompanying calligraphic text expresses feelings of separation and bitterness. The Office (辦公室) explores power dynamics between employer and employee.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until March 10
Photo Courtesy of Double Square Gallery
NO ON (事故) is a solo exhibition by Joyce Ho (何采柔), which is on view at TKG Plus. Ho works between painting, sculpture and theatre, and is a seasoned scriptwriter and theatre director. The Chinese and English exhibition titles do not directly correspond in meaning but share a similar quality of wordplay. Ho’s work ponders daily life and examines the intimate yet distant relationships between people and realities. Her work often leads the viewer into deconstructed quotidian scenarios presented as ritualized spaces. The show features a number of objects and images that together weave a dramatic narrative. From moments of tenderness, gripping tension, emptiness and interpretation, the artist is particularly interested in liminal moments.
■ TKG+ Projects, B1, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號B1), tel: (02) 2659-0798. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until April 28
Photo Courtesy of Mind Set Art Center
Hanna Pettyjohn is a Filipino-American artist who works and lives in the Philippines and the US. She identifies herself as part of the diaspora, possessing a transnational identity; this cultural positioning is critical to how she perceives her own past and the histories of immigration. Born into a family of ceramicists, Pettyjohn works in sculpture and painting to explore issues of alienation, loss and anxiety. She often draws from her memories, which leads her to reflect on the transient nature of life. Her solo exhibition, Concurrencies, at Mind Set Art Center features a selection of portraits of female immigrants and porcelain sculptures. Each picture shows the outline of a woman’s face, which is juxtaposed with background imagery drawn from her homeland and current residence, and is distinguished by different styles of lighting, color and contours “to give every unique story a [unique] voice,” writes the gallery.
■ Mind Set Art Center (安卓藝術) 108, Heping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市和平東路108號) , tel: (02) 2365-6008. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11am to 6pm
■ Begins tomorrow; until March 29
Photo Courtesy of Micheal Ku Gallery
Chen Ching-yao (陳擎耀) is a Taipei-born painter and photographer committed to the deconstruction of power and symbols. Chen draws inspiration from Japanese and Korean popular culture, borrowing familiar symbols from mass media and placing them into playful scenarios. By use of satire, the artist seeks to downplay the symbols of power by exposing their absurd nature. Chen’s solo exhibition, AK Girls and Panzer, at Double Square Gallery presents new large-scale paintings of himself, famous political leaders and an army of girls modeled after the famous Japanese idol girl group AKB48. “Human beings create gods for everything, including gods in politics… If I become [a god], Girls’ Generation would become my entourage whereas AKB48 would serve as my personal guard,” writes the artist in the exhibition preface. The girls are dressed in white shirts and short uniform skirts, poised in moments of combat and play. Dear Leaders (親愛的領導) are a series of paintings that examine the culture of mythologizing political figures in various Asian countries. National Geographic Channel (國家地理頻道) is a body of paintings that imitate the dramatic formats of popular adventure TV programs.
■ Double Square Gallery (雙方藝廊), 28, Lane 770, Beian Road, Taipei City (台北市北安路770巷28號), tel: (02) 8501-2138. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:30am to 6:30pm
■ Until April 6th
Photo Courtesy of d/art Taipei
MUNASHICHI (六七質) is a Japanese artist who works between illustration, animation and game design. As an illustrator, MUNASHICHI creates exuberant, maze-like pictures of city streets, factories, abandoned sites and towering metropolises. ANDAERφ is the artist’s debut illustration monograph that includes a selection of works produced in the last eight years. An exhibition of original illustrations from the publication is currently on view at d/art Taipei.
■ d/art Taipei, 2F, 14 Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市武昌街二段14號2F), tel: (02) 2383-0060. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 10pm
■ Begins tomorrow; until March 24
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) heroically seized residences belonging to the family of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “purchased with the proceeds of alleged bribes,” the DOJ announcement said. “Alleged” was enough. Strangely, the DOJ remains unmoved by the any of the extensive illegality of the two Leninist authoritarian parties that held power in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. If only Chen had run a one-party state that imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents, his property would have been completely safe from DOJ action. I must also note two things in the interests of completeness.
Taiwan is especially vulnerable to climate change. The surrounding seas are rising at twice the global rate, extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in the country’s cities, and typhoons are growing less frequent (resulting in droughts) but more destructive. Yet young Taiwanese, according to interviewees who often discuss such issues with this demographic, seldom show signs of climate anxiety, despite their teachers being convinced that humanity has a great deal to worry about. Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety isn’t a psychological disorder recognized by diagnostic manuals, but that doesn’t make it any less real to those who have a chronic and
When Bilahari Kausikan defines Singapore as a small country “whose ability to influence events outside its borders is always limited but never completely non-existent,” we wish we could say the same about Taiwan. In a little book called The Myth of the Asian Century, he demolishes a number of preconceived ideas that shackle Taiwan’s self-confidence in its own agency. Kausikan worked for almost 40 years at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reaching the position of permanent secretary: saying that he knows what he is talking about is an understatement. He was in charge of foreign affairs in a pivotal place in
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