Among Taiwan's generation-X artists, Hong Tung-lu (洪東祿) has enjoyed quite a star status despite his intention to keep low-key about his life and works. His fame mainly comes from his sensitivity for and the ability to create something every gen X-er can relate to, such as his Mazinger-Z series. In Nirvana (涅槃), his current exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, he explores cyperspace and the feeling of "Nirvana" brought about by electronic media.
Hong spent his childhood in the countryside of Changhua, where his family ran a textile factory. During the industry's heyday in Taiwan, he grew up amid textiles of bright primary colors and tacky flower patterns. His family moved to Wanhua, the old-time commercial center of Taipei, in his high school years. There, Taoist temples occupied as large a quarter as brothels and dingy street markets abutted historical sites. The young Hong witnessed the most exquisite as well as the rawest side of Taiwanese culture.
Since 1996, Hong has been featured in several major exhibitions here and abroad, including the Venice Biennial in 1999 and Taipei Biennials in 1996 and 2000. He's best known for near-life-size duratrans prints on light-boxes in which popular icons, such as female characters from Japanese animations Sailor Moon and Evangelion are superimposed on Catholic images.
In these works, the collage of symbols of different cultures had given rise to much discussion in the international art circle while the unique aesthetics of Hong's works were viewed here as quintessentially Taiwanese.
A later series shows an female action-figure firing her gun while Manhattan skyscrapers in the background are being bombed. It was created, quite ironically, just a few months before the Sept. 11 attack on New York last year.
Hong was studying there at the time of the incident and he was forced to cancel his scheduled exhibition. The shock led to the change of style apparent in Nirvana. His characteristic color scheme largely of restless primary colors has been replaced by warm pastels. "Witnessing September 11 shocked me out of the wild and harsh colors I used when I was younger. It quieted me down. Now I would rather be low-key [in my works]," Hong said.
The exhibition includes three flash animations, all titled Nirvana and starring Asian-looking "Alien dolls." Against the electronic music composed by Lin Chiang, the popular singer-turned-DJ in Taiwan's club scene, these asexual alien dolls act out their psychedelic journey in their capsuled universe -- the cyberspace.
The alien dolls, some meditating inside floating bubbles while others run in an endless tube, seem less lively than the action figures in Hong's previous works. Rather, they exude a self-contained euphoria that is out of this world. Is this a picture of Hong's near-Nirvana experience? "It's indescribable. Nirvana is too private an experience to talk about," Hong said, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own near-Nirvana experience. Some may experience it roaming in cyberspace, Hong said, while some others find it in electronic music. "With images and music, one can enter the elated state. That's the true happiness," he said.
What:Nirvana -- Hong Tung-lu solo exhibition
Where:Taipei Fine Arts Museum
When:Through Oct. 6
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