This year’s One Art Taipei event yesterday opened to the public at the Sherwood Taipei with a display of more than 3,000 contemporary works of art from across Asia.
The art fair, spread over three floors of the hotel, features works by artists from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and from 67 galleries across Asia.
A series of 12 contemporary pieces by 24-year-old Austrian artist Alessandro Painsi, which were on loan from the Be Fine Art Gallery in Taipei, attracted attention in an empty room of the hotel.
“We had an idea to build a room inside a room, because hotel rooms are always neat and perfect, but I wanted to create something that was really rough and raw,” Painsi said. “I wanted it to remind me of my studio and my work, which is very rough.”
One of Painsi’s eye-catching pieces was his Head of Lucifer painting.
“At the first moment, it is very chaotic and there is a lot going on,” Painsi’s curator and agent Anne-Marie Avramut said. “You see different textiles cut out and glued and sewn together by hand. You see big splashes of oil paint, writing in oil stick and very powerful and big gestures of brush strokes.”
However, what looks like chaos is meant to represent the core idea of the universe, she said.
It is “the concept of duality, which is reflected through Lucifer, who in European mythology is the one concept that incorporates both darkness and light, together,” Avramut said.
“It is like the Asian principle of yin and yang,” she added.
This year is the second year of the hotel art fair, which started last year, when it sold about 800 pieces, One Art Taipei director Rick Wang (王瑞棋) said.
“I’m definitely sure that the numbers are going to increase this year, judging from the delivery notices that we have received so far,” he said.
One Art Taipei, which opened on Friday for art collectors and special guests, runs until today.
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
TAKE BREAKS: A woman developed cystitis by refusing to get up to use the bathroom while playing mahjong for fear of disturbing her winning streak, a doctor said People should stand up and move around often while traveling or playing mahjong during the Lunar New Year holiday, as prolonged sitting can lead to cystitis or hemorrhoids, doctors said. Yuan’s General Hospital urologist Lee Tsung-hsi (李宗熹) said that he treated a 63-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙) who had been sitting motionless and holding off going to the bathroom, increasing her risk of bladder infection. Chao would drink beverages and not urinate for several hours while playing mahjong with friends and family, especially when she was on a winning streak, afraid that using the bathroom would ruin her luck, he said. She had
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry