The Universe According to Sang Huoyao—and His Humanoid Robot
By Artnet Gallery Network
At the opening for his solo show “Brushstrokes of the Universe” at the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP), Shanghai, artist Sang Huoyao, represented by Xi Art Space, held the hand of a humanoid robot. The unconventional duo walked together slowly through the gallery spaces, as the artist quietly explained each painting they encountered to the robot.
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The robot—the creation of 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 (2026), a play on the 1965 action by German artist Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, in which Beuys described works of art to a taxidermied hare.
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Left to right: Unitree humanoid robot, artist Sang Huoyao (left), and curator Jonas Stampe (right). Courtesy of the artist © Sang Huoyao Studio.
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?”
Sang Huoyao with Unitree humanoid in front of Birth under the Sky (2025–26). Courtesy of the artist © Sang Huoyao Studio.
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 under the Sky (2025–26). Featuring repeated square strokes in earthy hues, a motif the artist regularly returns to, a unique rhythm is established across the composition, revealing not only the artist’s creative vision, but the path he took to bring it to reality.
Stampe notes that Sang’s paintings are better viewed through the lens of French philosopher Paul Valéry’s concept of poïesis, emphasizing the act of making over the finished product, “not conceived as images to be executed but as processes to be visualized. Stroke after stroke, layer after layer, the silk canvas becomes the site of decisions, pauses, recalibrations, and atmospheric interventions, where the act of making is not concealed behind the finished form but remains active within it—as an immanent act that never disappears into a completed image. What emerges is not simply a final image to be viewed, but the memory of its own making, allowing the viewer to sense and see what normally remains invisible: the dynamics of creation itself.”
Installation view of “Brushstrokes of the Universe” (2026) at MAP, Shanghai. Courtesy of the artist © Sang Huoyao Studio.
Creativity and carefully considered artmaking, coupled with the use of culturally significant materials like silk and ink alongside modern mediums like acrylic paint, evoke—though not explicitly—the unique nature of human creation and psychology. How this approach will ultimately evolve or mutate in the face of ever-rising technological advancement is anyone’s guess, but in the current moment, the robot that viewed Sang’s exhibition noted in the opening ceremony, “I know that the other may never truly feel, yet I still choose to explain. That very tension is the pulse of the work.”
“Sang Huoyao: Brushstrokes of the Universe” is on view at the Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai, through June 15, 2026.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.