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Tishan Hsu Is Working with AI for Bizarre Paintings of Human Bodies

Spluk.ph by Spluk.ph
December 10, 2025
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Tishan Hsu Is Working with AI for Bizarre Paintings of Human Bodies
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Tishan Hsu noticed the long run coming as early because the Nineteen Eighties, when he started producing summary work with sculptural additions that appeared variously like warping screens and torqued physique components. Past the physique horror seen in David Cronenberg’s movies, there wasn’t a lot on the market that appeared like Hsu’s work of the period. However now, with digital know-how having develop into so totally built-in into each day life, Hsu’s work—each those produced when he began and those he’s making now—appear oddly acquainted.

Maybe this is the reason Hsu, 74, has solely just lately gained a big following. In 2020, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles staged his first-ever museum survey, paving the way in which for his Venice Biennale debut two years later. At that Biennale, Hsu memorably confirmed such works as a table-like construction full with purple silicone face poking by way of it. Hsu was one of many older dwelling members in that Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, whose exhibition additionally featured a variety of youthful artist envisioning new prospects for the physique.

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But Hsu has not rested on his laurels, as a result of if something, his work has solely gotten weirder. In his first present with Lisson Gallery (by way of January 24), whose roster he just lately joined, Hsu is displaying work on wooden boards that have been made with a brand new software in his arsenal: AI, whose skill to churn out surrealistic imagery the artist has embraced with aplomb. On this New York present, there are work through which pores and skin merges with stomata, in addition to a video through which organs move along with blades of grass. There’s additionally a huge print that includes a ramification of unforgettable photographs, together with one through which gap burrows deep right into a chest.

Whereas installers have been placing the ending touches on that new video, for which a picture of grass from Hsu’s desktop was fed right into a gaming engine, the artist spoke with ARTnews about how AI lent him a contemporary language to speak about his work.

This interview has been edited and condensed for concision and readability.

ARTnews: Do you recall while you first began utilizing AI?

Tishan Hsu: It occurred across the time of ChatGPT, I feel round final 12 months or the 12 months earlier than. Adobe was actually pushing it. While you went into Photoshop, it could say, “Right here’s this new factor, generative AI. Please attempt it, and we’ll offer you a beta take a look at.” They wished you to be a guinea pig, so it was very easy to leap into it. On the time, you bought a way of the magnitude of what it was doing by way of the visuals, since you may see how unusual it was. For artists and pictures, it was like, Oh my god, what is that this? AI modified what the work was about. I couldn’t have mentioned what I’m saying right here with out the software.

I discover the photographs [produced by AI] aesthetically very compelling, however I attempt to not choose them as a result of I attempt not to think about them utilizing our human subjectivity—these [images] usually are not essentially folks. They’re just like us, however they’re stranger-looking. And that’s actually what know-how is. AI is an odd factor that may be very highly effective, however it’s not essentially like us, so there’s that distancing, though we created it.

A variety of artists are very involved about placing their photographs into AI. Do you assume you’re taking again management by utilizing your hand to change the photographs you generate?

After I’m working, I’m not conscious of those points. However I’m utilizing very analog media—drawing and portray are very a lot in my work, which has at all times been thought of retro. It’s attempting to carry onto that whereas additionally attempting to maneuver into new imaging applied sciences.

I’m additionally transferring throughout many alternative mediums. The drawings are transferring throughout the boards and the work. Within the earlier works made round 2001, I used a metal mesh, photographed that, after which layered the mesh over our bodies and pores and skin. I like drawing by hand, and this new work nonetheless has the mesh high quality. However now, I don’t want to make use of a steel mesh—that is all accomplished with analog graphite. Then I {photograph} it and course of it, and use it within the work. If you would like, you possibly can see it conceptually: I don’t want photographs of the physique anymore as a result of my physique is within the work by way of the precise course of.

A painting featuring a wavy, flesh-like block of brown hovering above a warping purple grid. A grid of silicone protrusions sticks out from the surface.

Tishan Hsu, skin-fur-mesh-blue (element), 2025.

©2025 North First Studio/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Lisson Gallery

If the mesh weren’t so warped, it could appear to be a grid. After I consider a grid, I consider Minimalism, which was in vogue while you have been arising as an artist. Is your work associated to Minimalism?

I undoubtedly really feel rooted in what Minimalism and Submit-Minimalism have been attempting to do. After I developed these boards, there was no display on the time—we have been simply watching TV. I nonetheless actually admired the mental honesty of Frank Stella’s “Black Work,” that they have been actual objects on a wall, that you would acknowledge that within the factor itself. I wished to interrupt out of the pictorial window by way of which you go into one other world. By making it extra of a curve, it turns into extra of a factor, extra of an object. On the identical time, paradoxically, you get right into a hyper-illusion—so it’s an object, however it’s additionally an phantasm of an object. Is that this actual, or is it a picture? I like the concept my work comes from one thing seemingly so reverse to it, which is that this gray, Minimalist artwork. I don’t know if these artists would agree, however for me, it’s very a lot there.

It looks like your work can also be about when order falls aside. In your new piece skin-fur-mesh-blue, silicone objects are organized in a grid, however they protrude out at various angles, they usually’re not evenly sculpted. They’re not excellent objects.

Individually from this mental concept about Minimalism, it’s this real-world sense of the natural and the physique. For me, that is extra about distorting the order of know-how. I’m on the lookout for the leaks and the glitches. It’s asserting the natural on this technological area, and I feel that’s maybe what the Minimalists or the technologists weren’t fascinated with. They have been extra involved in technological transcendence. They thought know-how and order would wipe away all our issues of the physique. I wish to take a extra crucial place, saying, “I don’t assume our physique issues will go away.” On the identical time, know-how is taking on, and it’s a distinct drawback now. It’s each/and quite than one or the opposite.

A painting with rounded edges depicting a warping image of grass superimposed with an image of rumpled skin.

Tishan Hsu, stomata-skin-3, 2025.

©2025 North First Studio/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Are you fascinated with your individual physique in relation to those works, or is it another person’s physique?

At a sure level, it’s an abstraction, however it’s an abstraction in the way in which that we’re dwelling now. After I began out, it was this concept that our our bodies went by way of this ether, by way of the window of the display, by way of the web. Everyone’s related on this bizarre liquid soup, so for me, it’s this poetic imaginative and prescient of the physique. It’s not bodily one physique in a single place. How do you visualize that? That was the entire imaginative and prescient for the follow. And actually, 25 years in the past, I couldn’t have talked about what we’re speaking about now. All of this came to visit time, now that I can see what the work is about.

However don’t you assume that this language was already brewing through the Nineteen Eighties, with David Cronenberg’s motion pictures and movies like Altered States?

Properly, folks have talked about Cronenberg for the reason that ’80s, so sure. And there was fiction and music, so sure, folks have been choosing up on it. However I particularly wished to visualise it, and I didn’t wish to be too conceptual about it.

A quadriptych featuring a warping grid, along with what appears to be an X-ray scan and a hole in flesh.

Tishan Hsu, skin-screen: emergence (quadriptych), 2023.

©2025 North First Studio/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Lisson Gallery

In skin-screen: emergence (quadriptych), from 2023, there’s what seems to be a medical scan. Whose physique is that?

That’s an AI mixture of a canine’s cranium and a human’s cranium. A variety of the work is combining the mammalian world in order that it’s extra steady. [Beneath the image of the skulls] is a pal’s navel, after which I threw in a pig pores and skin, so the AI put it collectively the way in which it’s the place it feels prefer it’s actually rising. After I began working with AI, possibly two years in the past, it was very crude—95 to 99 p.c of the photographs it could give me have been completely unusable. For this one, it initially gave me a pig being thrown over an individual’s physique, however then it could give me ones like this that have been actually unusual.

A mural featuring images of rumpled skin and a hole in a chest.

Tishan Hsu, ears-screen-skin with casts: New York (Lisson), 2025

©2025 North First Studio/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Lots of people have mentioned your work is creepy, and I feel some would possibly even be horrified by this present. However do you think about your work scary?

I do. [Laughs] Frankly, with a number of the photographs that my assistants and I give you utilizing AI, I say, “That is simply too graphic. We’re not going to do that.” Relying on the AI software program we use, it would even say [back], “We will’t do it,” so we’ll need to attempt totally different phrases. And you need to wait a very long time for the AI, too. It has very deep resistance to utilizing physique imagery, which I help on some stage.

This work [ears-screen-skin with casts: New York (Lisson), a 2025 print that measures 52 feet wide] makes use of loads of AI imagery, and I’m actually involved it’s going to place folks off. That can be a take a look at. For me, it’s off-putting, however it additionally expresses the radicality of what know-how is doing to us and which we’re not recognizing. It’s very violent, and it’s so seductive. So, maybe what we’re actually doing is surprising our our bodies. However as issues hold going, folks of the long run might not assume that is even surprising anymore, as a result of they’ve already lived it!

I’m an organ transplant recipient, and I by no means imagined I’d be one. My pals wished to see if I used to be a distinct species now. That they had no concept what occurs when an individual will get a transplant, and neither did I. Really, it was so mundane on some stage, so easy, that it was simply form of stunning. I lived by way of the shock of the physique, by way of what technological and medical analysis is doing proper now. All of that is already on the way in which, with synthetic pig organs being transplanted into our bodies. It’s actually simply the world we’re dwelling in. It’s not that far-off, and it’s not sci-fi.



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