Tishan Hsu’s visionary multimedia practice has been steadily concerned with the nexus of technology and the human body. Trained as an architect and working as a “word processor” in the early 1980s, his education and early exposure to the accelerated use of softwares has guided his adoption of non-traditional materials, and explorations of how virtual realities and new intelligences might weigh on the human condition. Hsu’s exhibition on the museum’s third floor – his first in Canada – traces his dedication to experimentation from the 1980s until the present day, reflecting his pioneering thinking, as well as focusing on metamorphosis and alienation. 

Interface Remix combines painting, sculpture, installation, and includes a new site-specific work made from emergent technologies. Key works from the last five decades will be presented alongside never-before-seen paintings and sculptures from the artist’s collection.

In recent years, Hsu has come to understand the screen itself as a kind of “skin” or barrier between online and physical worlds. Sensitive to the museum’s architecture, Hsu has envisioned a new site-specific wallpaper that stretches and wraps into an architectural object appearing both rigid and supple. Cast acrylic elements protrude from the work’s surface bringing the virtual of digital imaging into the real. As aspects of our lives become increasingly transformed by technology, Hsu’s new work continues to locate the human experience amid the rapidly evolving digital environment.