MOCA Cleveland, Ohio

From 28 August, 2026 – 7 March, 2027, MOCA Cleveland presents ‘Tishan Hsu: permeable surface’.

For over forty years, Tishan Hsu has explored the increasing interconnectedness of the human body with technology, resulting in a visual language that merges digital imagery, industrial materials, and biomorphic forms to create uncanny works. Trained in both classical fine art and architectural design, Hsu’s work bridges Renaissance technique with futuristic sensibilities. He traces our deepening entanglement with screens and systems and how they mediate our experience of the world. This exhibition presents a career-spanning selection of works, including Hsu’s first and most recent video works: Folds of Oil, 2005 and emergent mesh, 2025. permeable surface, demonstrates Hsu’s consistent inquiry into perception, the body, and how technology is transforming our sense of reality, revealing the tactile and psychological impacts of our digital age.

For nearly five decades, Hsu has investigated the evolving relationship between humans and technology. Though he gained early recognition in the 1980s with solo exhibitions in New York, he spent much of the following decades working outside the public eye, refining his ideas about digital culture, the body, and perception. Early works from this period introduced his now recognizable aesthetic—blurring the boundaries between flesh and technology through biomorphic forms, industrial surfaces, and a visual language evocative of digital systems.