Taipei Dangdai 2023:
4 Artworks to Hunt Down

1. Etsu Egami's Rainbow-2023-t-3 (2023) at Tang Contemporary Art

Etsu Egami fever shows no signs of slowing. It seems an art fair is not complete without her broad dripping strokes being hung on the walls of one of her loyal gallerists: Tang Contemporary Art, Whitestone Gallery, and A2Z Gallery.

Born in 1994, Egami has already enjoyed a solo exhibition at Tang Contemporary Art, Seoul, during the city's Frieze debut, and demand for her work on Ocula (especially among Taiwanese and South Korean collectors) has increased threefold since.

For those less familiar, her portraits are born out of the material navigation of her international experiences and the desire to explore the medium of oil paint as a Japanese artist.

'In a similar sense to how the Renaissance was a revival of Ancient Greece that blossomed in Rome, how can oil painting, which was born in the West, bloom in Eastern countries?', Etsu Egami explained to Ocula Advisory.

2. Li Yuan-Chia's Untitled (1958) at Richard Saltoun Gallery

Li Yuan-Chia can be credited for pioneering modern abstract art in Chinese circles supported through his involvement in the revolutionary Taiwanese Ton-Fan group.

However, his association with the avant-garde movement forced him to flee the country, travelling to Bologna, onto London, and finally settling in Cumbria, Northern England. The house in which he lived stands today as a memorial of his life's work in the form of the LYC Museum and Art Gallery.

The country he called home until his death in 1994, has since been host to a handful of solo exhibitions celebrating his pioneering spirit.

Most recently, The Whitworth in Manchester presented a solo exhibition in 2019 of his hand coloured photographs. In 2016, Richard Saltoun Gallery dedicated their Frieze Masters booth to the artist which set the scene for their retrospective on the artist at the London gallery the following month.

3. Alice Neel's Dick Kollmar (c. 1965) at David Zwirner

At just over two metres tall, Alice Neel's Dick Kollmar (c. 1965) will be a commanding presence at David Zwirner's booth.

A full-body portrait of a neighbour's son, the painting is a shining example of Neel's genius—applying paint in what seems an almost frivolous manner, yet capturing emotion and character with brilliant scrupulous attention to details.

Taipei Dangdai marks the second time Dick Kollmar has been shown in Greater China in recent months. The portrait featured in her solo exhibition Men from the Sixties (17 November–21 December 2022) at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, and marked her first solo in the region.

The only standing full-body portrait in the exhibition, the presentation was a nuanced examination of masculinity at a time when Neel was evolving her looser, more open compositions which would come to define her later practice.

The touring retrospective, Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle at Barbican, London (16 February–21 May 2023) closes at the end of this month.

4. Paul Rouphail's 3 o'clock (Orange Day) (2023) at Stems Gallery

On a visit to NADA Miami last December, works by Paul Rouphail made a lasting impression for both their exquisite detail and the artist's ability to curate unnerving mise-en-scènes. He was showing two works in Miami with Stems Gallery, one of which, Adios (2022), was featured in our Spotted at NADA Miami on our return.

Their reception must have been overwhelmingly positive as now the Brussels and Paris-based gallery brings a solo presentation of Rouphail's paintings to Taipei.

As with many of his paintings, light in 3 o'clock (Orange Day) (2023) frames the space. Cutting the canvas diagonally, the beam of light from the window draws our eyes past the potted plant to the scrunched-up ball of paper sitting on the edge of the table, leaving you pondering on the details of its relevance and owner.

Stems Gallery in Paris will host a solo exhibition of Rouphail's work in January 2024.