The artworks by Taiwanese artist Ping-Yu Pan primarily revolve around the relationship between myths and contemporary life. The artist believes that the collective myths created by human beings are in fact the images composed of superimposed individual life stories. The archetype of these collective myths has been demonstrating a formal evolution that proceeds by a series of nuances, which calls for our awareness of the fundamental issues that the humanity faced. Such an evolving form is exactly the structure of the collective myths. Previous discourses on the myths mainly put universal interpretations on their archetype and emphasized the archetype’s reproduction. Pan, in contrast, argues that we can comprehend the meaning of the mythical structure only by capturing the nuances of its dynamics. The mythical structure connotes that the structure of the archetype has transcended the formal confines through its evolution proceeding by a series of nuances, and therefore become a creative, dynamic structure as a whole. The formal evolution requires the creative participation and deduction of life to transcend the limitations of the archetype. Transcending the archetype (or transcending the paradigm) represents a hero’s odyssey. The myths inspired us by showing how to transcend the confines of life, reality, or paradigm, allowing us to be ourselves, that is, to be our own heroes. In other words, the mythical structure refers to finding our own archetypes and transcending them.