Tishan Hsu

Tishan Hsu has been engaging with the cognitive and physical effects of technology on the human body since the mid-1980s. After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he encountered computers early on through a side job as a ​“word processor” on Wall Street in New York. His work operates at the intersection of organic and artificial life, combining traditional techniques with innovative materials and digital processes. He is particularly interested in manual practices that lead to a decelerated mode of artistic production and that also evoke a certain slowness in the viewing experience.

In Breath 2, grid-like structures reminiscent of digital scan lines meet organic deformations that stretch across the picture surface like skin under tension. The regular horizontal line pattern is distorted by a central bulge, creating the impression of a body pressing against a membrane-like surface. This visual tension produces an ambivalent materiality between digital image structure and bodily presence, in which screen and skin increasingly overlap. The surface appears simultaneously as a smooth interface and as an elastic, vulnerable membrane, giving rise to the impression of a ​“breathing” image in which movement is rendered visible as deformation.

An inserted X‑ray image in the lower section of the composition extends this visual logic by introducing a second level of visibility: while the raster structure suggests an external capture of the body, the X‑ray points to its penetration and internal legibility. The body appears as a fully readable object, whose surface and interior are equally translated into visual data. This simultaneity of different imaging techniques evokes a state of permanent observation and technological control, in which the body no longer exists as an opaque entity but as a continuously analyzable structure.

On the right edge of the image, a silicone form disrupts the homogeneous surface. It resembles an interface or a technical connector and points to processes of input and output, for instance in the context of medical apparatuses such as ventilators. At the same time, it appears as though a person were lying beneath the image surface. Breathing no longer emerges as an autonomous activity, but as a potentially regulated and technologically supported process.

As in other works by Hsu, the human body in Breath 2 is not depicted as a closed entity but as a hybrid assemblage of organic matter and technological infrastructure. The work thus points to a present in which fundamental life processes such as breathing are increasingly embedded in networks of measurement, control, and technological intervention. In this sense, the depicted ​“screen-skin” can be understood as an interface where body and technology not only meet but become indistinguishably intertwined.

Breath 2, 2021
UV print, silicone on wood
121,9 × 57,5 × 7,6 cm
Courtesy Private Collection, Paris