The Universe According to Sang Huoyao-and His Humanoid Robot

A solo exhibition in Shanghai features an opening performance where an artist holds the hand of a humanoid robot and walks through gallery spaces. The artist explains each painting to the robot, while the robot can recognize visual information but cannot feel the works. The performance is titled to echo Joseph Beuys’s earlier act of explaining art to a dead hare, linking explanation, perception, and living presence. The show is curated to foreground concerns about AI and technology and their effects on the present and future. The exhibition presents 52 new and recent works from 2020 onward, including silk-based paintings, aluminum panel installations, and new media works, emphasizing a human process of execution and consideration.

"The robot-the creation of (2026), a play on the 1965 action by German artist Unitree, Hangzhou-features advanced visual recognition systems, but while it might be able to "see" the works of art it is shown, it intrinsically cannot feel them. Accompanied by Sang, the performance of moving through the exhibition is entitled How to Explain Painting to a Living Robot Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare , in which Beuys described works of art to a taxidermied hare."

"Curated by Beijing-based Jonas Stampe, the opening performance contributed another layer to the solo exhibition, foregrounding pressing concerns and proliferating questions around A.I., technology, and their effect on both the present and future. In his curatorial essay accompanying the show, Stampe notes, "In its profound simplicity, the performance raises questions about painting's new role and meaning in the age of artificial intelligence, while also addressing broader and more urgent issues on intelligence, emotion, and identity. What will the world-and the human being-become in the shared civilizational future shaped by the emergence of this transformative technology?""

"The exhibition proves a cogent contrast to the preoccupations of advanced technology, reflecting a deeply human process of execution and consideration. Comprising 52 new and recent works (dating from 2020 through present), "Brushstrokes of the Universe" encompasses Sang's signature silk-based paintings, aluminum panel installations, and new media works. At the heart of the show is the monumentally scaled, 46-foot-long silk painting Birth und"

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