It is very easy to associate Mr Red with his graphic novels, which are characterised by colourful illustrations and simple text. In person, the 33-year-old bespectacled Taiwanese artist comes across as boyish, happy, content and imaginative. These are also the qualities that many of his works possess.
To display his unique world of pastel colours and comic characters to Hong Kong audiences, Mr Red is staging an exhibition Hey, Cheers! at the Hong Kong Arts Centre this month. The exhibition showcases a wide variety of illustrations, including watercolour paintings, crayon drawings and animations.
'Painting is a means for me to express my ideas,' Mr Red said. 'But there are also better ways for expression, such as through text and moving images ... There will be a chemical effect if these things combine together.'
When you enter the gallery you will be greeted by not only an array of colourful illustrations, but also explanatory text hand-written on the walls alongside the paintings. Looking up from the gallery you will see an animation of stunning visuals projected on the wall.
Among the various works are two paintings of seaviews inspired by the Twenty Love Poems (1924) of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. It is not surprising that we can find poetry in Mr Red's paintings, as the artist is determined to close the gap between literature and painting.
'He [Neruda] uses nature as a metaphor for desires in a love relationship,' explained Mr Red, who spent a week on the coast of Taiwan studying Neruda's poems. 'It could be a bright day, but then the dark clouds came and probably in three minutes it was pouring. It was then that I understood his poems.'