ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI Announces “Beyond The Circular Ruins” – A Group Exhibition Challenging the Boundaries of Technology, Perception, and Control
Shanghai, China — May 2025
ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI is proud to present Beyond The Circular Ruins, a group exhibition featuring works by aaajiao (China), NOH Sangho (South Korea), RAO Weiyi (China), TAN Mu (China), and WU Ziyang (China). The exhibition will be on view from May 23 (Friday) through July 19 (Saturday), 2025.
Taking its title and inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges’ metaphysical short story The Circular Ruins, the exhibition explores how contemporary artists engage with algorithmic logic, artificial intelligence, and the illusion of technological mastery. Much like Borges’ recursive narrative—where a dreamer realizes he is himself a dream—Beyond The Circular Ruins challenges notions of authorship, autonomy, and illusion in the age of machine learning and systemic complexity.
Aesthetic Disruptions in the Age of Algorithms
At the core of the exhibition is the concept of “non-mastery”—a deliberate rejection of full control over generative systems. Instead of seeking dominance over technology, the participating artists embrace glitches, anomalies, and ruptures as fertile ground for meaning. These disruptions, far from being errors, are reframed as opportunities to critically examine how machines simulate intelligence and how those simulations distort human perception, memory, and emotion.
Through video art, digital installations, mixed media, and painting, the works unravel the blurred boundaries between binaries such as human/machine, logic/emotion, input/output, and reality/simulation. They reflect how AI systems, trained on vast datasets through opaque architectures, generate outputs that often escape human predictability, thus becoming both tools and subjects of critical artistic inquiry.
Highlights and Artist Practices
NOH Sangho’s Permanent Beta – How Can I Not Believe in God? (2020) presents a digital universe of characters trapped in a perpetual development cycle. The artist assumes the role of an omniscient creator whose interventions simulate miracles, raising questions of faith, control, and complicity in endless loops of digital consumption.
aaajiao interrogates the porous boundary between the physical and digital. In works such as Bot (2017–2018) and Agent (2023), he incorporates glitch aesthetics and fungal-inspired AI entities to critique how data systems reshape bodily perception, memory, and imagination.
TAN Mu explores the often-invisible infrastructures of modern life—from undersea cables to cosmic observation networks—linking technological memory with human experience. Her work posits technology as an extension of the body and a vessel for existential reflection.
WU Ziyang’s Agartha (2024) weaves documentary, fieldwork, and speculative fiction to investigate the spiritual and ecological consequences of techno-systems. His video work creates a layered archaeology of selfhood in a digitally mediated world.
RAO Weiyi offers a quieter but equally poignant response to the digital era with paintings that capture intimate, emotionally grounded scenes. His work provides moments of human warmth and reflection amid the overstimulation of the information age.
Beyond Illusion: A Critical Reflection
Beyond The Circular Ruins does not offer easy resolutions. Instead, it opens up a space of productive ambiguity—a conceptual seam where systems falter and alternative narratives may begin. The exhibition ultimately questions the seduction of seamless automation and invites viewers to reflect on their own roles within increasingly algorithmic realities.
