Lu Hsien-ming was born in Taipei in 1959. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, Chinese Culture University in 1982. Not long after he demobilized from the army, Lu cofounded Hwa Kang Association of Modern Art with his classmates. The association held symposiums and published journals in order to promote the interchanges of information about arts and set up a channel for critical young artists’ speaking voice. In 1985, Lu became one of the founding members of Taipei Painting School, a society which “responded to the pulse of the society.” In the early 1990s, Lu established his unique individual language with painting symbols found in his Overpass. For over three decades, ideas such as “the relationship between the artist and his society,” “the original intention to reflect upon the immediate circumstance” never fails to appear in the creative vein the artist rendered to construct the “metro realism” of Taipei landscape.

Grandpa's Allegory was completed in 1996. The work is arranged in the style of middle age “altarpiece” which juxtaposes gigantic cityscapes and constructions with lonely human figures. In the middle of the composition is a chilling ray of white light shining forward to the sight. The pillars and beams of the overpass and the flyover indicate backwards to the unidentified source of light in the distant horizon. The two forces of light contrast each other in their directions. The cripple old man walking alone by himself is squeezed to the right corner. Stuck between the mutual force of pull and drag of forward and backward spaces, his existence appears to be even more lonely and exhausted—there is nowhere for him to go. The artist makes use of the 3-dimensional real objects to extend the composition of the canvas—pushing the viewer backward to a certain visual distance to “mourn” for such an uncanny cityscape silhouette. The seriousness of this nearly religious style brings out a theme that conforms to the immediate reality. Lu purposefully seared this particular time and space of the history. The work allows the viewer to retrospect, to acknowledge, and to reflect upon our own life.

Around the time when Taiwan annihilated martial law, the radical change of the social and political circumstances had caused impacts on all walks of life. “Change” was a general phenomenon in every aspect of life. Taipei City was under the process of transforming into an international metropolitan. Various major transportations were under construction rapidly. All these major transportation constructions changed the complexions of the city within a short time and influenced citizens’ life to a certain degree. Witnessing the rapid change of Taipei, Lu Hsien-ming once commented: “My heart crushed, I only wanted to draw all these changes in time….” What crushes the artist is not the glory or the consumer culture’s prosperous surface, but the unbearable fatigue of life hidden within the gaps and seams of the city environment. Lu chooses this particular point of view to observe the city where he was born and grew up in order to explore the interrelationship between humans and civilization as well as their values to exist. His works not only became the classical fine art icons, they were also the historical evidences the artist reserved for this special historical period.