Blurring the boundaries between biology and technology, artist Tishan Hsu explores the evolving interface between the human body, digital systems, and artificial intelligence in his prescient contemporary artworks.
Tishan Hsu was born in Boston in 1951 and raised between Zurich and Ohio, the son of Chinese immigrants. He graduated from Yale University in 1973 with a BA in architecture and environmental design. Although Hsu trained as an architect, his early exposure to cross-disciplinary thinking—alongside contemporaries like Jessica Stockholder—shaped a hybrid practice that would fuse sculpture, painting, and new media long before digital culture became mainstream.
After relocating to New York in the 1980s, Hsu became associated with a group of artists probing emerging post-humanist themes in art. During this time, he began teaching at institutions including MIT and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently lives and works in New York.
Tishan Hsu's practice centres on the materialisation of digital and biological data, crafting sculptural and painterly forms that render the unseen infrastructures of contemporary life tangible.
Throughout the 1980s, Tishan Hsu developed a distinctive body of work exploring the human form as a technological conduit. Works like Vertical Ooze (1986) and Holding His Breath (1984) depict hybrid entities that blur the boundaries between skin and screen, organ and architecture. Using materials such as acrylic, silicone, and photographic textures, Hsu creates environments where the body appears absorbed into its surroundings—perforated, fragmented, or compressed into technological frameworks. These early works critique the mechanisation of intimacy and presciently forecast the loss of bodily autonomy in an age increasingly mediated by digital interfaces and algorithmic perception.
Hsu's works often present fleshy, ambient surfaces interrupted by gridded patterns, embedded screens, or topological forms that resemble the inner anatomy of both humans and machines. In Cell (1987), he constructs a bas-relief using painted styrofoam and pigment to evoke both a petri dish and a keypad—commenting on the translation of life into data. His tactile surfaces recall membranes, with blister-like forms evoking biological response, damage, or mutation. By overlaying painterly techniques with sculptural depth and photomechanical imagery, Hsu visualises the psychological and physiological toll of inhabiting a world saturated with screens, data collection, and mediated vision.
After decades of under-recognition, Hsu's work re-emerged as uncannily relevant in the 21st century. Institutional shows including Tishan Hsu: Liquid Circuit at SculptureCenter (2020) and The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) positioned him as a visionary voice in discussions on digital embodiment and post-human aesthetics. His inclusion in Signals: How Video Transformed the World at MoMA (2023) reinforced his role as an early interrogator of screen culture's impact on perception and subjectivity. These recent exhibitions not only recontextualised his contributions but also sparked dialogue around how bodies are archived, altered, and made algorithmically visible.
Tishan Hsu has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.
Tishan Hsu's Instagram can be found here.
Tishan Hsu's practice has been featured in leading publications including Artnet News, Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times.
Tishan Hsu is best known for his pioneering exploration of the relationship between the human body and technology. His artworks—spanning painting, sculpture, and installation—feature hybrid forms that evoke skin, screens, and neural pathways, often anticipating the ways digital interfaces would reshape daily life. Through a futuristic yet bodily visual language, Hsu visualised the merging of organic and synthetic systems, positioning him as a prescient voice in contemporary art's engagement with post-humanism, data perception, and the aesthetics of technological mediation.
Despite early success in the 1980s, Tishan Hsu's work was overlooked for decades, partially due to its uncategorisable nature and the art world's limited interest in digital themes at the time. His investigations into screen culture, data, and embodiment were ahead of their time—arriving before widespread digital saturation. As contemporary art began to reckon with post-humanism and the aesthetics of surveillance, curators and critics rediscovered Hsu's work, leading to major institutional exhibitions and overdue recognition of his visionary practice.
Tishan Hsu uses an innovative combination of materials that emphasise tactility and hybridity. These include urethane, ceramic, acrylic, styrofoam, pigment, and digital image transfers, often applied to custom supports. His surfaces mimic skin, cellular structures, or synthetic membranes, drawing attention to the porous boundaries between the biological and the technological. By incorporating screen-like voids, ridges, and reliefs, Hsu creates artworks that feel simultaneously organic and cybernetic—engaging viewers in a sensory experience that evokes touch, memory, and machine-mediated perception.
Ocula | 2025
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