Cordless
- Year1989
- MaterialSilkscreen on canvas
- On viewBasement floor
- CopyrightTishan Hsu, Cordless, 1989 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022. Foto: Axel Schneider, Frankfurt am Main
More about the artwork
In Tishan Hsu’s silkscreen “Cordless,” gearshift devices, copied from a BMW advertising brochure,alternate with suggestions of fleshy orifices and bodily details. The merging of the organic and thetechnological has defined the work of the Chinese-American artist since the early 1980s. During hisarchitectural studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Hsu was confronted at quitean early stage with the then unforeseeable significance of computers and digitalization. His three-dimensional works also reveal his interest in the effects of information and medical technologies onour understanding of the body. The large sculpture “Transfusion” appears as if a body has fused with a dark brown, tiled object on wheels. The artwork’s clinical surface, reminiscent of office furniture andoperating rooms, stands in stark contrast to its interior: the light pink color and materiality of therubber call to mind burst innards. In this way, the work brings physicality back into technological systems (and institutions).
