Artist engages in dialogue with AI through works

On Saturday, artist Yang Yibin's solo exhibition 400 Stories, 400 Gifts officially opened at the A4 Art Museum in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The exhibition will run until Oct 11.

At a time when artificial intelligence is deeply integrated into artistic creation, this exhibition is centered on the physical translation of AI-generated images and a mechanism of giving. The exhibition attempts to re-examine the materiality of artworks, the logic of their circulation, and the social relationships between people and artworks reconstructed in an era of image overload and infinite content generation. It explores how a work of art can regain genuine meaning through people's choices and sharing.

Visitors can register for their preferred works through an on-site reservation system. After the exhibition ends, the museum will give the artworks away for free to the audience.

In her speech, Sun Li, director of the A4 Art Museum, says that Yang, through years of reflection on art, historical transformations, civilization, and art history, has created numerous works by engaging in dialogue with AI. Just as the advent of photography and cinema reshaped people's understanding of art, technological advances are redefining artistic value.

This exhibition not only presents the artist's thinking and understanding of the times, but also seeks to engage the audience in discussing the changes that technological transformation brings to artistic creation, production, and the art system. Bringing together diverse voices through the exhibition and fostering deeper discussions will become an important function and responsibility of the museum.

Curator Wang Wenzhe says that this project is grounded in Yang's AI-driven creative practice, in which he uses artificial intelligence to generate a large number of images and then materialize them into physical objects, hoping to bring the works beyond the traditional exhibition space and into real people's lives.

Wang notes that when content is easily produced and replicated, it becomes even more worthwhile to discuss how a concrete object can form a new relationship with a specific person. Yang regards his works as "gifts". By being taken away and brought into personal lives, they may acquire new stories. Over the next month or more, these 400-plus works will gradually leave the exhibition space and enter people's lives. The exhibition is not meant to conclude AI art, but rather to ask the public: when you can have infinite images, what is worth choosing? In the face of ever-advancing technology, how do you make your own judgment?