Empty Gallery is proud to present delete, New York and Shanghai-based artist Tishan Hsu’s first solo exhibition in Asia. Working between painting and sculpture, Hsu’s practice explores the effect of a rapidly expanding technological sphere on our embodied subjectivity and conception of the human. The body of new work on view in delete interprets these concerns through the lens of Hsu’s recent research into his own family history.
Drawing on a collection of family photo-albums which survived partially intact during China’s revolutionary years, Hsu subjects this archive to a multi-layered process of digital manipulation and re-photography. In the process, these iconic images of early 20th century Chinese life – at once intimate and anonymous – are transformed into mirage-like landscapes reflecting the virtuality of history.