洪磊把一个个人生活升华为对历史文化充满矛盾的表现上。
他用摄影直接摹仿宋代宫廷花鸟画，花鸟都是现成品，花是刚采摘下来的，鸟是死的。这一用现成品的摄影使古代的被摹仿物变得更加艳丽和富贵。当代形式对历史形式的不加掩饰的直接利用是表明一种灿烂文化死亡还是意味着一种新的实用主义态度？
不过，今天有能力恢复的却是一种更为灿烂，更为虚假的形式。
洪磊在以摄影的形式再造虚假，同时，这一“再造”表达了表现文化的一种特有形式。洪磊的艺术可以说是现代虚无主义的体现。他在现代生活中企图“自造”历史，以抹杀和怀疑现代生活的真实性。他以历史的幻象来强调现代生活的无着落感，他用一些死去的鸟和一些花枝组成一幅宋代花鸟画。这些作品力图无差别地恢复历史，但他们并不采用历史的方法，而是用现代的光影技术制造历史，所以从一开始历史就被定义在“自造”的过程中，现代文明的最大功能就是有能力并且在不停地制造着各种图像。
今天，与其说是一个唯物主义世界，毋如说是一个图像主义世界。洪磊以“自造”的幻象忧郁地揭示现实生活的虚无性质。
Hong Lei’ s Made-up History

By Leng Lin

Hong Lei sublimates a personal life to a contradictory expression of historical culture. He takes photos imitating Song court flower-and-bird paintings; flowers are newly picked, birds dead.His way of taking photos by using ready-made objects has made the ancient imitated objects even more splendid and noble.Does the contemporary language of directly using historical forms without any disguise indicate the death of splendid culture or mean a new kind of pragmatism?
But what can be restored today is a more splendid and more false form. Hong Lei is reproducing falsity by means of photos and at the same time this "reproduction" is a special form of expressional culture. Hong Lei' s arts can be said to reflect modern nihilism. In modern life, he attempts to made history himself so as to deny and doubt the authenticity of modern life.He stresses the unsettledness of modern life with historical phantasms, using dead birds and flowers to form some Song flower-and-bird paintings. These paintings try to restore history exactly without adopting historical methods. They made up history with modern photography. So from the beginning, history is confined to the process of "self-making. " The most important function of modern civilization is the capacity to make all kinds of images. Today' s world is more a world of materialism than of images.Hong Lei reveals modern life' s nihilism with his self-made phantasms in a melancholy way.

Translated by  Ji Yaming