TISHAN HSU

Early Years

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.

Artworks

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.

Embodied Interfaces

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.

Surface, Skin, Screen

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.

Return and Recognition

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.

Exhibitions

Tishan Hsu has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Interface Remix, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2024)
• Tishan Hsu, MAMCO, Geneva (2024)
• Liquid Circuit, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2020). Travelled to SculptureCenter, New York (2024)
• M.I.T. List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1988)

Group Exhibitions

• The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970—2020, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2024)
• Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023)
• In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965—1985, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022)
• Cloud Walkers, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022)
• Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s, The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (2018)
• Below the Canal: After 9/11, Asian American Arts Centre, New York (2003)

Instagram

Tishan Hsu's Instagram can be found here.

Critical Reception

Tishan Hsu's practice has been featured in leading publications including Artnet News, Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times.

FAQs

Ocula | 2025