Pleased to share Sun Xun’s group exhibition, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intercultural Dialogue’ at The State Hermitage Museum, Russia. Co-curated by Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the State Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art and head of the Hermitage 20/21 project and Victoria Kondrashova, director of The Aksenov Family Foundation, this exhibition features 14 artists from 10 countries mainly exhibiting works produced with the aid of AI technology.

On view is Sun Xun’s single-channel video ‘Time Spy’ (2016). This work was created from 10,000 hand-carved woodcuts, which were then transformed into 3D to explore a surreal tale of a magician intent on stealing time. Featuring winged-violins, mechanical horses and gothic architecture, the film offers a malleable and transitory view of time which is both inventive and immersive. The tension between natural and mechanical is furthered by the use of traditional techniques such as ink drawings and woodcuts, which have been transformed into 3D using modern technologies. Sun Xun explains that ‘time is invisible, it’s untouchable, but it remains the foundation of our existence’, and his work continues to play with the influence of history and our complex cultural interpretations of time.