Taiwanese contemporary painters Hung Tung-lu (洪東祿) and Red Capsule (紅膠囊) personify their inner experiences with The Universe in Mind (一念萬象). Employing a visual style reminiscent of Japanese manga, the two artists explore the “tragedies and comedies” in their lives through the fictitious characters Little Red (小紅) and Dog Face Man (狗臉男).
■ Gallery 100 (百藝畫廊), 6, Ln 30, Changan E Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市長安東路一段30巷6號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2536-2120
■ Until May 16
The Moment of Landscape — Paintings by Contemporary Chinese Masters (此景此情：大陸油畫名家寫生展) features 66 representational landscape oil paintings by 10 artists from China. In addition to displaying 56 of their earlier works, TFAM invited the participating artists to paint Taiwan’s landscapes and cityscapes, the results of which are also on view.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm, closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. Tel: (02) 2595-7656
■ Until May 9
Taiwanese digital photographer Chen Wan-ling (陳宛伶) ponders the experience of travel in A Little Factory of Life (小生活工場). Chen’s images of people driving in cars or airplanes flying out of a vortex examine larger questions of human migration and the difference between the movement of the human body and that of the vehicles they create.
■ Der Horng Art Gallery (德鴻畫廊), 1 Jhongshan Rd, Tainan City (台南市中山路1號). Call (06) 227-1125 for a viewing
■ Until Sunday
The buildings and spaces of his native Xian preoccupy Chinese painter Wang Fenghua (王風華) in his solo exhibit at Gallery J. Chen. Instead of nostalgically resurrecting Xian’s rich archeological history, he depicts structures — apartment blocks, airports, train stations — that serve as symbols of modern life. Feng’s visual style — both in terms of its subtle shading and his emphasis on rectangles and squares rendered in a subdued palette — evokes David Hockney’s early Pop Art works.
■ Gallery J. Chen, 3F, 40, Ln 161, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段161巷40號3F). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 9pm. Tel: (02) 2781-0959
■ Until May 9
Existential Emptiness (真空妙有) is a solo exhibit by Chinese conceptual photographer and video artist Cui Xiuwen (崔岫聞). Cui’s photographs, which have been collected by the Tate Modern Art Gallery and Pompidou Center, focus on the struggles of young women growing up in a rapidly modernizing China and the changing roles and relationships between women and men.
■ Tina Keng Gallery (大未來耿畫廊), 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Rd, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 7pm. Tel: (02) 2659-0798
■ Until April 25
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, presents an exhaustive retrospective of the work of world-renowned American photographer David LaChapelle. LaChapelle, who hit New York’s art scene in the early 1980s as a protege of Andy Warhol, has photographed many of American’s top celebrities — from Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie to Gene Simmons and Hugh Hefner — covering themes such as religion, war, celebrity and the environment. His peculiar and unmistakable style of staged photography is characterized by glamorous aesthetics and dramatic tension that some have called kitsch and others high art.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號). Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Tel: (02) 2552-3720. Admission: NT$50
■ Until May 30
This month Taiwan received a brutal Christmas present as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) passed all three of its desired amendments, making recalls of elected officials more difficult, gutting the Constitutional Court and altering the budgetary allocations to local governments. The nation at present has no ultimate authority to determine the constitutionality of government actions, and the local governments, largely controlled by the KMT, have much greater funding. We are staring into an abyss of chaos. The amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), if they become law (as of this writing President William Lai
Dec. 30 to Jan. 5 Premiering on Jan. 4, 1956, Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan (薛平貴與王寶釧) unexpectedly packed theaters for the next 27 days. Taiwan’s first 35mm Hoklo-language (commonly known as Taiwanese) movie beat out the top Hollywood blockbuster, Land of the Pharaohs, and the Mandarin-language Peach Blossom River (桃花江) in box office sales, kicking off a craze that lasted until around 1970. More than 800 Hoklo-language films were made despite government attempts to promote Mandarin. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) owned the nation’s three major production houses, mostly creating Mandarin films filled with anti-communist messages and patriotic propaganda. But most
Charges have formally been brought in Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) bribery, corruption and embezzling of campaign funds cases. Ko was briefly released on bail by the Taipei District Court on Friday, but the High Court on Sunday reversed the decision. Then, the Taipei District Court on the same day granted him bail again. The ball is in dueling courts. While preparing for a “year ahead” column and reviewing a Formosa poll from last month, it’s clear that the TPP’s demographics are shifting, and there are some indications of where support for the party is heading. YOUNG, MALE
When the weather is too cold to enjoy the white beaches and blue waters of Pingtung County’s Kenting (墾丁), it’s the perfect time to head up into the hills and enjoy a different part of the national park. In the highlands above the bustling beach resorts, a simple set of trails treats visitors to lush forest, rocky peaks, billowing grassland and a spectacular bird’s-eye view of the coast. The rolling hills beyond Hengchun Township (恆春) in Pingtung County offer a two-hour through-hike of sweeping views from the mighty peak of Dajianshih Mountain (大尖石山) to Eluanbi Lighthouse (鵝鑾鼻燈塔) on the coast, or
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