"Reflecting back, considering Hung Ming-lu reading and contemplation on life"

"The text was written by Hsu Yuanda, Assistant Professor at the Tainan University of the Arts."

Self-reflection is a significant method in Hung Ming-lu's artworks. Through continuous introspection, he seeks to find the meaning and value of his existence. By constantly introspecting and being aware, he deconstructs himself, and sorts through the influences from the external environment. Therefore, his works reflect a grounded perspective on life. Hung Ming-lu explores himself, and in doing so, explores his connection with the world around him. In the early stages of his creation, his works tended towards symbols of surreal introspection, using simplified eye symbols as the 'sight' of the artwork. In the darkness of the unknown, he uses imaginative biological forms, combined with external symbols such as tombstones that are closely related to his personal experiences, to express the feelings and emotions of the exploration process.

Due to his father's occupation as a tombstone maker, Hung Ming-lu was exposed to the beliefs, forms, and symbols of life's endpoint in Taiwan at an early age, allowing him to engage with the themes of life and death earlier than other artists of his age. As a result, in his artworks, the humanistic space is dominated by symbols and forms related to the endpoint of life in Taiwan, such as traditional Taiwanese graves, tombstones, and coffins. His personal experience of growing up surrounded by these symbols, due to his family's involvement in tombstone making, did not instill the same taboo feelings that others might have towards symbols related to the end of life. Instead, he felt a sense of impermanence and anxiety towards life: "Whenever the author (Hung Ming-lu) goes to the cemetery and sees each familiar grave, there is always an indescribable sense of distance. Inevitably, negative emotions such as anxiety, disappointment, helplessness, and distrust emerge." Consequently, these negative emotions from childhood accompanied his growth. He began to introspect and explore the meaning of his own life, as well as the emotional responses generated by the endpoint of life, expressing his feelings and reflecting on values. Recently, he has begun to gradually deconstruct these symbols, objectively reexamining life through partial symbols and contemplating the meaning and value of life.

During the period of 2010, Hung Ming-lu's artworks already began to feature the central motif of eyes. At this time, many of the themes that would characterize his later works began to emerge. For instance, during this period, symbols such as the sun, moon, clouds, waves, and tombstones symbolized his imagination and contemplation on the connection between heaven, earth, and human life and death. The imagery during this period depicted immense energies of nature and the sense of powerlessness that humans experience within it. The artwork "Waiting" (2010), amidst the stacking of clouds, light, and waves, symbolizes the tumultuous expanse of the universe.

The viewing during this period largely focused on the relationship between the external natural environment and life. Therefore, the compositions mainly depicted symbols of the external environment such as clouds, light, and waves, surrounding core images resembling eyes, which symbolize his personal inner thoughts.

In 2011, his works gradually shifted towards introspection, with the external space gradually being replaced by extensive darkness, while tombstones alone remained, showing a peach red reflection. The artwork "Cycle" (2011) portrays a similar central form, representing the unknown of nature with a background of subtle darkness. The tombstones on both sides, through eye symbols, present entangled lines, as if numerous destinies are influencing countless energies under the sun and moon. The central figure in the image, resembling the core of nature, pulsates with immense energy within the space. Tombstones in this artwork are still depicted with peach red paint, symbolizing the image of life. In Taiwanese society, tombstones symbolize a person's identity, typically with symbols representing their ancestral hometown, lineage, origin, or place names. Therefore, tombstones have become symbols of past history, family, and social status in traditional Taiwanese society.

Tombstones appear frequently in Hung Ming-lu's works, becoming a focal point of introspection and societal relations, which becomes a central theme of his contemplation on life and is reflected in his works. Moreover, viewing and examining become extremely important themes in this period. Works such as "Thoughts" (2011) and "Alone" (2011) use entangled lines as objects of inner introspection. "Thoughts" portrays chaotic and strong pulsating observations and reflections, while "Alone" depicts loneliness standing in space, with entangled lines juxtaposed with tombstones arranged in the background, reflecting Hung Ming-lu's anxiety and unease when contemplating the relationship and significance between the "eye" as a means of viewing and tombstones as symbols of individual existence in society.

For Hung Ming-lu, creation is a process of observation and contemplation. He says, "The process of creation is like having a dialogue with oneself, almost like muttering." In this series of works, the symbol of the eye becomes increasingly important, whether through introspection within oneself or by turning to observe the natural or cultural world externally. Hung Ming-lu gradually constructs his subjective space, viewing the world and the value of life within it. Viewing becomes a pursuit, as seen in the work "You, Me" (2012), juxtaposing shapes resembling tombstones and waves, intertwined with biological yet unknown lines. In this process of back-and-forth viewing, wood, symbolizing the natural world, begins to appear in his works.

After 2013, he began to deconstruct the forms of tombstones and coffins, with the background being wooden patterns introduced in the previous series. After 2014, geometric patterns from the deconstruction dominated the main axis of the composition. The repeatedly recurring deconstructed forms that appear are something Hung Ming-lu repeatedly confronts in the process of painting. For him, initially, it was confronting negative emotions of powerlessness towards life. However, as his creative series transitioned, Hung Ming-lu seemed to gradually turn towards the partial deconstruction of death-related symbols, re-examining and contemplating the meaning of life, freeing himself from anxiety and powerlessness towards the passing of life. "I talk about the end of life 'death,' death is both the exit and the entrance of life. Along the way to the end, I try to examine the value and meaning of people's lives, using repetition to reduce the intense feelings of heavy symbols." Horizontal and vertical lines of homogeneous and simplified shapes repeat, and the heavy, dark space is reorganized into geometric patterns under Hung Ming-lu's deconstruction, even transforming the originally heavy black patterns into light white ones. A net of homogeneous patterns is formed in front of the wooden background, and from a certain distance, the shading of the image's decoration disperses, and the background's natural wood pattern becomes the main focus of vision. Nature becomes the visual protagonist. In Taiwanese culture, tombstones symbolizing the end of life become partial patterns, deconstructing the heaviness of life and social cultural taboos. While visually appearing light and repeated, ultimately, nature encompasses everything in the background. Everything returns to dust, and to soil. Going with the flow, following the rhythm of nature