In the first section, “Local Avant-Garde”—focused on the major breakthroughs in Hon’s career—Bath of Fire (1968) announced the artist’s reemergence from the ashes of his past. The triptych is a significant piece that marks the beginnings of the artist’s experimentation with the mixture of silkscreen prints with oil and acrylic paints, as well as loud, pop-art-inspired colors. As if scorched into the surface of the canvas, fragments of images, letters, and poetry evincing Hon’s personal life, together with lines from the Surangama Sutra—which touches on life’s transitory experiences—are imprinted in sharply contrastive reds, greens and blues. Splashes of oil paint appear to leak from the edges of the rectangles and circles that divide the composition. The more eagerly one tries to discern Hon’s past from the scraps of information, the more dizzying the viewing experience becomes. While Bath of Fire was visually jolting, on the opposite wall were a series of contemplative Polaroids, pushing materials boundaries in an equally creative manner. Made in the 1980s, the images, showing colorful halos hovering over chairs or doors, result from Hon’s manipulations of the Polaroids’ photochemicals, as well as light-refracting orbs. The Untitled works thus toy with the confines of the photographic medium. 

Opening the third section, “Here, There and Everywhere,” was Nil and Void (1996), a composition with a lightly spray-painted layer of white revealing a circle, made up of dynamic black, white, red and gold marks. Next to the circle is a calligraphic line from the Heart Sutra: “All Dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not produced nor destroyed.” Aside from works that articulate Hon’s religious beliefs and obsession with circles, the section also included abstracted landscapes based on his travels around the world. His adventurous spirit is captured in Plunge and Live (1999), displayed at the very back of the exhibition. The collage of painted, rectangular fragments depicting the rapid waters of Iguazu Falls was created when the couple revisited the site 20 years after the artist fell into the stream during a solo trip. The breathtaking strokes effectively recall the force of nature, celebrating Hon’s miraculous escape and life itself.

Hon’s impulse to express himself is palpable throughout his oeuvre, yet he always resisted revealing the complete picture. For Hon, art is an ongoing story. “Painting demands being innovative, being in sync with the times and being of one’s own,” he said. By tracing the changes in his art, “A Story of Light” provided visitors with the chance to understand not just Hon’s artistic innovations, but his evolving views of life.