WangShui: Window of Tolerance

“It’s important to actively stir and dissolve the categories that trap us.” —WangShui

Window of Tolerance is WangShui’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe. Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, it sets a new standard in artistic co-creation between humans and AI.

The exhibition of video, sculpture, and painting explores the intimacies of human-machine entanglement. At its core is the live simulation Certainty of the Flesh: a posthuman reality show run by a machine learning programme trained by the artist.

Together with their collaborators, WangShui has produced the entire dataset of movements and sounds and created a large-scale LED installation on which the “artificial drama” unfolds. Seen from the front, the translucent triptych of screens resembles a window with open shudders, offering a panoramic view similar to the panels of an altarpiece. On the backside, suspended chains of screens show multiple camera perspectives of the scene presented on the front—blurring the lines between scripted and unscripted realities.

“I hope that AI can help us break free from thought and behavioral patterns that are no longer useful to us as a species,” says WangShui.

Through recursive learning loops, the artist has been developing a visual language together with AI. The paintings are created in a process they call “sensory integration,” where AI is utilised to read and evolve the artist’s own gestures. The hand-etched refractive surfaces of the paintings, as well as the morphing bodies in the simulation invite us to reconsider the everyday structures of our perception. How can technological tools, such as AI, augment and transform the ways we see ourselves and each other?

Curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer and Teresa Retzer.

Window of Tolerance is programmed in dialogue with Inside Other Spaces and presents a contemporary perspective on the historic format of Environments.

Certainty of the Flesh is a co-commission by Haus der Kunst München and the Asian Art Circle at the Guggenheim, New York. With additional support from LEAP Society & Constantin Schwaab; Sammlung Kerstin Hiller und Helmut Schmelzer; The New York State Council of the Arts.