J.C. Kuo Exhibit at Asia Art Center

Lady in the Water

Today was the last day of this exhibition

This morning on the way to the flower market on Chien Kuo South Road we passed the Asia Art Center and decided to go in. It was our first visit. The gallery itself was small (only the first floor and basement) and took about 10 minutes to walk through. It was worth the visit though (especially if you are in the area).

They were currently having a J.C. Kuo solo exhibition. The young assistant Vivian told me J.C Kuo is the first Taiwanese contemporary artist and is the first one to fuse traditional Chinese painting styles with modern Western art. I have no idea what that means. I liked the colors, the energy and the implications of the pictures (but mostly the colors).According to the profile on the Center's website:

J.C. Kuo was born in 1949 in Lugang, Taiwan. Since 1980s, J.C. Kuo uses his striking stroke to describe the disorder of Taiwan society and develop his own unique painting style. He uses characteristically heavy and bold black lines, juxtaposed shapes and images, and traditional ancient stories to produce a strikingly colorful style to describe Taiwan vividly. In his painting, he articulates the phenomenon of the turbulent overlapping of ancient and modern history and Chinese and Western culture through the method of temporal juxtaposition. His painting style which arose from his personal self-awareness and experimentation has a strong style of expressionism. He uses this way to discover the collective psychology of Taiwanese. For Kuo, his paintings are the media to express his observation, imagination and criticism for Taiwan.

Instead of being an ontlooker, Kuo tries to walk into society and do the research about Taiwan with his exquisite observation. He uses post-modern way to depict the diversity of Taiwanese culture. In recent years," balloon" is his new painting image to describe Taiwan. In his large painting "Totem and Taboo – Floaters(2007)", he depicts young men and women full of vitality. Brimming with physical energy, they exhibit a vibrant, attractive physical condition and form a ritualistic rhythm of group dance. In this painting, he uses the image of balloon to symbolically refer to the current state of Taiwanese society, which means the collective psychological state of anxiety that commonly exists in Taiwanese society. His latest master pieces will be displayed in Asia Art Center(Taipei) in his 2009 solo exhibition "Before & After 2008 – Floating." Kuo’s paintings will lead us to find a way to seek for the inner peace as well as identity of ourselves.

Once again, I must say I just liked the pictures. Some of the pictures are shown below. Personally, my brain is probably paper mache and probably looks like the brain below.

Brain News

This conference one was also pretty cool. I liked the talking heads transoposed on the flags. I am sure there is meaning there but I just liked the colours and contrasts.

Conference

Once again, had no idea about the symbolism but the flowing colors made it interesting.

Motion

This one gave me a sense of power and weakness and the struggle to keep the earth moving forward. Thought it was fairly dramatic.

Atlas Heaves - 1

Atlas Heaves - 2

This one was still kind of interesting but I felt a little boring. I liked the flowing hair but didn't figure out any symbolism. There probably was some but anyway, I would not buy this one for my house.

Lady

If you look closely at the bottom. These guys are squatting on the flags of the world. Thats about right!

Squatting on Flags

I liked this one with the man striking the woman down. Its almost magic.

Strike

This ones cool. Look closely and you will see newspapers in there mouth so they are either swallowing everything the read or they are spewing it out. One or the other. I liked it!

Propoganda

This one was really cool and had a lot of dramatic elements inside it. The pic below is a section of a much larger picture.

Life

First, from the above you probably figured out I (Paul) know nothing about art but, both Queenie and I enjoyed the exhibit. Actually I just looked at the brochure and today was the last day, so we got lucky! However, Vivian the assistant told me they will have more edgy, modern pieces in the gallery in the future and that the next exhibit will be one with sculptures. The gallery is worth a visit if you are in the area (but I wouldn't make a special trip UNLESS you are an Art Addict) the gallery is really too small.

Address: 177 Chienkuo South Rd. Sec. 2 (close to Hoping E./Chienkuo S. intersection)
Tel: 2574-1366

Queenie's Flower

Queenie's Flower

Queenie bought this flower as a bud in the market. A few days later it had bloomed into this beautiful flower.

Dinner in Keelung

The Dinner Group

Last night I went up to Keelung to have dinner with some colleagues from my old company, IEI. Queenie decided not to join. I was actually quite surprised how easy it was to get to Keelung from the office. Got on the MRT, went to Chunghsiao-Fuhsing Stop. Get out of the MRT at Exit 2 and turn left on Chungshiao. You cannot miss the bus. The bus trip itself in rush hour traffic took no longer than 50 minutes so I was pleasantly surprised. My colleagues all drove there from Shi Zhi, and one of my colleagues also drove me home. Getting home was less than 30-minutes. Not too bad at all! Pretty simple really. The bus drops you off outside the Keelung station and you can also catch the bus from there back to Taipei too. The last bus leaves at around 10:50pm I believe (although I didn't need to catch it).

Outside Keelung Station

My colleagues (actually they were my old lunch time English students) decided to take me to the highest restaurant in Keelung that overlooks the bay. The restaurant was pretty nice but too bad about the dark windows. We couldn't really see the view outside the Window and that would have been awesome. Maybe in the daytime it would be better. The restaurant was on the 13F (not many very high buildings in Keelung) and had parking in the basement so all very convenient.

The restaurantwas a traditional Taiwanese seafood restaurant with round tables and crackly speakers for when a Chinese version of "Happy Birthday" needed to be played. There were a few groups around having fun and some old guys were celebrating a birthday and got pleasantly noisy later in the evening. Of course, seafood was on the menu and we had a ton of it. Shrimps, crabs, prawns etc. And it all tasted great! Of course the question is "What else do you eat in Keelung?"

Fish

Crab

Shrimp

Prawns

No Idea!

It was fun catching up with the group and hearing there plans for the future. Celia is planning to go to the Czech Republic next week and Stacey is planning to go to Tokyo at the end of May so a lot of them are planning there travels. It was also sad to hear some of the old group have been let go but at least they have found new jobs. So all in all it was a great evening enjoyed by all.

Eric and Stacey

Sammi and Vivian

Celia and Stacey

All of Us

Thanks guys! I had fun and it was great seeing you all.

More pictures @ Dinner in Keelung

Seven Years Ago Today...

Us...Just Us

13 April 2002, seven years ago, we got married. We took our wedding pictures on the beaches on the North East Coast of Taiwan. It was a cold and windy day. Our friend Vivian took these pictures of us as she tagged along. Since then we have had an amazing time. Its had its ups, its downs, but we have mostly had a blast and loved it..

On our knees

Bliss....

The Flamenco

Run baby Run

On the beach...

Wild Coast

What were we doing?

Love is...

Hush little baby, don't say a word...

Here we come..

CEO Pose...

Sophistication

Out of Africa

Happy anniversary Queenie, I love you.

Formosa Fun Park - Japanese Hot Springs

All Dressed in Kimono's

So on Saturday Queenie's family decided to go up to the hot springs next to Formosa Fun Park in Bali, on the North Coast of Taiwan (opposite Tamsui). Queenie went up there with her family while I rode there on my bike. Queenie and the family decided to spend the night and I rode back after spending about five hours up there with them. Here are some pictures from the trip. Hope you enjoy.

Charlene and Rochelle

Queenie's Mom and Dominic

Ming Rong and Charlene

Queenie and Charlene

Rochelle

Andrew and Charlene

Crazy Uncle Paul

I am sure you can tell by now that to go to the hot spring you lose your shoes, have to wear a kimono and generally have as much fun as you want. There is an inside section that was made to look like an ancient Japanese village with games and activities for the evening. There are a few restaurants and a ton of things for kids to do. The kids had a great time just hanging out here. Of course you can swim failry late and a lot of people were still swimming when I left at 7:30pm. The bedrooms themselves were fairly big so all and all a very comfortable place to stay. For me the highlight would be going to the water park and sliding down the slides, but the water park was closed as it is still "too cold." Ah well. We had a great time. Queenie said her family had a blast too.

More pictures CLICK HERE

Paul Joined Twitter

Lets see how long it lasts shall we? For what its worth my twitter.com name is @durbanbay. If you want to follow me great. If not, no hard feelings.

Riding to Bali (Tamsui)

Looking at Tamsui

Getting to Guandu

Saturday morning was beautiful. It was cool but sunny with a slight breeze blowing through the North of Taiwan. Queenie and I had already planned to ride up to Tamsui with three of Queenie's colleagues Stacey, Anna and Yun Chun. Queenie had previously ridden up to Guandu with them and left her bike there. I agreed to ride up to Guandu and meet Queenie there with her friends (who carried their bikes on the MRT) and then ride up to Bali, opposite Tamsui.

To be honest I had a bit of a late night on Friday so waking up and getting on my bike was a bit difficult but once I got going it was fine. It was just great riding next to the river. I managed to get up to a good steady pace and made it to Guandu in 90-minutes. Queenie and her friends arrived shortly and then of course we all went to eat brunch.

Beyond Guandu

After an hour of eating breakfast we decided to get going (by now it was around noon). We first rode through the crowded streets of Guandu (and to be sure the streets were very crowded) and then over the Guandu bridge. The ramp up the bridge is fairly steep but the view from the top wasn't bad. At least I got to see the river boat I have heard so much about in the recent past.

Once over the bridge the crowds cleared up a bit and the weather was just amazing. The views of the rivers were spectacular and Queenie said it reminded her of the Bosphorus in Turkey (with slightly younger buildings on the side). When we crossed the bridge the wind was starting to pick up a little and the river was starting to become restless, but the choppy water made it look and feel a little more wild than Taiwan is and gave the feeling we were in a more remote and distant place.

Queenie and the Guandu Bridge

Fishing Boats

The View

Queenie and her friends

The ride to Bali was just incredible. The weather, as I said earlier, was tremendous. There were still quite a few cyclists on the path but it only got really bad once we got much closer to the town. For the most part there was enough space to get up to a good pace but still just riding next to the river and seeing the view of Tamsui was great. Even though there were lots of people out on the road I think its great to see more and more Taiwanese people getting involved in outdoor activities. When I first came here 10 years ago most Taiwanese people preferred to stay indoors but now with the cycle paths being well developed people get out and enjoy nature.

However, if you ever decide to ride a bike and take a video, it can be perilious. See below!

For what its worth I did survive. Ha ha ha but I did learn to not record and ride right behind someone else. Just before we got to Bali we stopped at on the river bank where we had a tremendous view of Tamsui.

After a while we eventually made it into Bali. Bali was absolutely crowded. I was stunned. I haven't been there for about 8 years. The last time I made it I think was in 2001 with my mom when she visited. Way back then the ferry dock was an old wooden pier with a muddy trail and tents next to the path where there were seafood restaurants specializing in mussels cooked in soup. I was really surprised by the transformation. The government has done a great job and if you like vibrant, crowded and noisy places then this would be a great weekend destination for you. Of course riding through the crowd was murder.

Paul, Yun Chun, Stacey, Anna and Queenie

Watching the windsurfers was also great. I haven't seen people windsurfing on the Tamsui river before but it was well worth it.

Once we got past Bali the crowd thinned out quite a lot. We passed through some smaller homesteads and traditional red brick Chinese houses that looked a little old. There was also a lot of greenery.

We rode on a little further and arrived at a small town. We bought some drinks and then decided to escape the crowds and go to an observation deck that overlooked the mouth of the Tamsui river.

I then decided to try and give a brief introduction on the mouth of the Tamsui river, but as you can see (and hear) the wind was quite strong making it fairly difficult to record.

After hanging around for about half an hour we decided to head back. It was getting late and Queenie decided she would ride back to Taipei with me. So we started heading slowly back to Taipei. By this time the wind had come up quite a bit and although we it was still warm, it would get much colder later. As we rode next to the river we found our way back. We decided to take a short break at Da Dao Cheng Wharf. I have never been there and it was nice just sitting next to the river with friends drinking some tea. We then proceeded to ride slowly home finally arriving at about 7:30pm. The last part of the journey was cold. There was a wind blowing off the river and we had only packed for riding in the day. It just goes to show, that old motto I learned way back when "Be Prepared" still applies today.

On the way back

Final Thoughts

I am really impressed with the way the riverways have been developed for outdoor activities. There are plenty of bike rental shops along the rivers for people who don't own bikes or who do not wish to have the hassle of riding so far. The beauty and the tragedy is that while more and more Taiwanese people are getting out, excercising and enjoying the outdoors, the roads have become very crowded in places and riding through the crowds can be a nightmare. Still, all in all it was a pretty great day. We had fun and I would certainly do it again. But before then I have to buy Queenie a new bike. Her's is way too heavy. That said, I highly recommend the ride.