Shanghai, China – ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI is proud to present the group exhibition Beyond The Circular Ruins, running from May 23 to July 19, 2025. Featuring the works of five contemporary artists—aaajiao (b. 1984, China), NOH Sangho (b. 1986, Korea), RAO Weiyi (b. 1993, China), TAN Mu (b. 1991, China), and WU Ziyang (b. 1990, China)—the show interrogates the complexities and contradictions of artificial intelligence, algorithmic systems, and the aesthetics of technological rupture.
Taking its title and conceptual frame from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Circular Ruins, the exhibition explores the recursive, dreamlike nature of technological creation. Borges’ tale of a sorcerer dreaming another into existence, only to discover he too is a dream, finds a contemporary echo in the black-box dynamics of deep learning, where layers of data-driven processes obscure authorship, origin, and intentionality.
Rather than seek to master these systems, the featured artists embrace "non-mastery," engaging with breakdowns, glitches, and ambiguities as fertile ground for new meaning. Through 24 works including paintings, video installations, prints, sculptural objects, and digital media, the exhibition foregrounds moments where human and machine cognition collide—and co-create.
Highlights include NOH Sangho’s Permanent Beta – How Can I Not Believe in God? (2020), a looping digital narrative in which virtual characters trapped in a state of perpetual beta testing mirror the faith and suffering induced by systems beyond their control. aaajiao’s bot, and Agent projects investigate the tactile boundaries between digital and physical through screens-as-membranes, incorporating fungal metaphors to reimagine AI systems as biological networks.
TAN Mu’s work traverses the invisible infrastructures that mediate memory and communication, from submarine cables to cosmological mapping, while WU Ziyang’s video Agartha (2024) constructs a speculative archaeology of AI and ecology through layered documentary and sci-fi aesthetics. Meanwhile, RAO Weiyi offers a quiet counterpoint, with emotionally resonant paintings depicting intimate human moments in tranquil, digital-era heterotopias.
Beyond The Circular Ruins positions itself as a critical zone of reflection and possibility—where glitches are not failures, but openings to rethink technology, authorship, and affect in the 21st century.
Sayart / Maria Kim sayart2022@gmail.com
