Tishan Hsu explores the entanglement of body and technology
A monumental new mural at Henry Art Gallery traces the artist's decades long investigation into how digital systems reshape our embodied experience, blending biomorphic forms with industrial and computational imagery.
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The contours of skin and membrane dissolve into grids of pure data in Tishan Hsu’s latest mural work, a sprawling composition that captures the moment at which the body becomes indistinguishable from the technological systems that increasingly govern our contemporary experience. Rendered in inkjet print on vinyl at monumental scale, the work pulses with distorted forms and interlocking matrices, an intricate choreography between the organic and the synthetic that speaks to our collective anxiety and fascination with the digital age.
Hsu’s practice has long orbited the question of embodiment in an era of unprecedented technological mediation. Since the 1980s, he has drawn visual language from computational innovation, medical imaging and industrial manufacture, collaging these disparate registers into works that feel urgently of our moment. His recent series of wallpaper based compositions brought this investigation into domestic space, flattening the boundary between fine art and everyday surface. The mural at Henry Art Gallery extends this enquiry further, transforming the gallery wall itself into a field of biomorphic and digital entanglement.
The work invites a sustained meditation on the increasingly porous boundaries between the body and the machine. Where once these seemed separate territories, Hsu suggests they have become fundamentally intertwined. The contorted figures that emerge from the composition are neither fully human nor fully digital, but rather occupy the liminal space between states. Distorted grids recall the architecture of computational systems, while the surrounding forms echo the soft contours of skin and tissue. Together, they compose a landscape in which bodily experience and technological infrastructure have become virtually inseparable.
What distinguishes Hsu’s approach is his refusal of easy critique or celebration. The work neither condemns our technological entanglement nor embraces it uncritically. Instead, it holds both possibilities simultaneously, inviting viewers to contemplate the complex negotiations that occur when emerging digital systems reshape our understanding of what it means to inhabit a body in the world. The biomorphic imagery recalls the organic, yet rendered through the apparatus of digital production and printing, these forms become something altogether new.
The mural remains on view through January 2028, offering an extended opportunity to sit with Hsu’s compelling visual language and the questions it provokes about human agency in an age of algorithmic mediation.
Imagery courtesy of Lisson Gallery (@lisson_gallery).
