Keith Tyson: ‘The Generative Universe’

Artists Heralding a New Age

Keith Tyson’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth DTLA, The Generative Universe (on view through August 16, 2026), is his first in Los Angeles since 2009. It is a survey of Tyson’s work over the last thirty years. Tyson’s background is as an engineer. He was an early coder and his work negotiates a world in which human intention and machine direction interact. Let me quote from the press release, At art school in Brighton in the early 1990s, he began to see paint as a programmable material—one shaped by codes of action, chemical reactions and conceptual constraints.” This was so fresh a direction that Tyson was awarded the Turner Prize (the British Art Oscar) in 2002.

For the first decade of his career, Tyson let the tech create the prompts for his art via a programmable device he called The Art Machine, that set the parameters for his work in terms of size, material, and even the subjects. At the press preview, Tyson said he is interested in “the in between state” and that his early works were meant to go “beyond my personal taste.” His work – paintings, drawings, sculptures and mixed media — crosses the boundaries between human and machine, between nature and artifice. His work prefigures but foresees our current integration of AI into contemporary life – and art.

Pixel, 2024, Painted bronze sculpture of a sod of earth withvarious grasses and plants, Sculpture: 60 x 45 x 45 cm / 23 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 17 3/4 in. Including plinth: 170 x 60 x 60 cm / 66 7/8 x 23 5/8 x23 5/8 in. Photo: Steve Russell.

The earliest work in the exhibition, Artmachine Iteration no. 1: Hello World, from 1991, has those words written in an early computer font as well as a handprint that reminds one of neanderthal cave drawings, which this was — in terms of computer-generated art. Tyson also built a cube-shaped like Everything, a machine that looks like a Star Wars device that aggregates a variety of sensor-driven measuring devices that constantly measure its surroundings. Tyson called it a “narcissistic sculpture”because it is only about itself. However, as he explained, after a decade Tyson felt he was reaching the vanishing point of machine prompt-directed work and wanted to introduce more of the human element back into his work.

Hauser & Wirth Curator Ingrid Schaffner said Tyson’s work expresses a range “between control and chaos” and explores how something comes into being. In some paintings, Tyson used chemical reactions on metal sheets, set in resin. In others, he explored symmetry, creating bright stunning works that dazzle. In yet others, such as his sculpture Pixel, Tyson took on the challenge of recreating a group of plants and the earth beneath it thanks to 3D scanning, fashioning it in bronze and then painting it to look uncannily realistic and teeming with life.

Everything, 2024, Stainless steel, electronic and analogue displays, environmental sensors, electricity, 75 x 75 x 75 cm / 29 1/2 x 29 1/2 x 29 1/2 in. Photo: Dawkins Colour.

In others, Tyson creates towers of images all taken from the animal life or ecology of a particular location, or incorporating historical and geographical information to determine the imagery. At Hauser & Wirth, some of these pieces are surrounded by wallpaper Tyson created that feature elements included in the work that speak to creating a total environment. The largest piece, 10,000 Things, is a work of strange symmetry, with the left side looking like a black & white graphic novel and filled with text exclamations one might find in a work by Roy Lichtenstein. The right side features colored images drawn from some of Tyson’s other works, as well other iconographic elements, including a handprint. If Tyson’s process is to be understood correctly, he draws all the elements and scans them into his computer, then prints directly onto canvas.

North Atlantic Still Life with Taito Overlords, 2026, Oil on canvas 185 x 125 cm / 72 7/8 x 49 1/4 in188.2 x 128.2 x 5 cm / 74 1/8 x 50 1/2 x 2 in (framed) Photo: Dawkins Colour.

There are many who are concerned that technological advances – AI 3D printing, algorithmic programming and quantum mechanics – will make art and artists superfluous. Tyson’s work proves that false and demonstrates that artists are not only the heralds of a new age, but that the human will always tame technology for its own creative purposes.

  Cover image: 10,000 Things, 2026. Ink and oil on canvas in artist’s frame, 260 x 800 x 2.5 cm / 103 7/8 x 321 1/4 x 2 in269.7 x 809.4 x 5.4 cm / 106 1/8 x 318 5/8 x 2 1/8 in( framed) Photo: Dawkins Colour; all images courtesy Hauser & Wirth DTLA