In conjunction with the large scale media projects they are known for, since 2020 WangShui has been developing a distinct technique of painting on aluminum. This process involves hand-etching aluminum surfaces with steel brushes, sand paper, chain linked gloves, and dental tools (amongst others). The artist applies these tools in inventive ways to investigate what they call the “empty stroke”, a negative mark that emits light and color. At times they fill these delicate scratches or “micro canyons” with dashes of pigment, tinting and modulating the refraction of light.

The artist likens the enigmatic aluminum surfaces to screens - exploring the relationship between light and desire. “Light has become a silent vehicle for data and control”. By engaging the metal surfaces in a process of recursive mark making, the body and surface become conduits of awareness in a perpetual flow of information.

Since the genesis of their painting practice, WangShui has applied technological tools such as machine learning, 3d modeling, and live simulations in their image making process. They have described AI as their “foil, muse, and psychic”. In this sense, the artist avoids any formulaic procedures with these digital tools but instead applies them as intuitively as the analog tools.

Yet, WangShui also describes the paintings in a very personal way as a “haptic diary”. The range of pressure applied to the highly sensitive surfaces of the aluminum, unfold as overlapping waves of intimacy and emotion. They ask, how does touch become an expression of our unique individual datasets? What can contemporary or “machine painting” show us about the shifting ontology of form and consciousness? And what are the sensations that will keep us truly connected across oceans inundated with data?