Keith Tyson’s ‘The Generative Universe’ at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles

Keith Tyson’s exhibition “The Generative Universe” at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles spans over three decades of his practice, presenting works that merge engineering, intuition, scientific inquiry, and poetic wonder. The show includes his pioneering Artmachine from the early 1990s, which used algorithms to generate art, alongside paintings, sculptures, and responsive works. Tyson’s approach treats the universe as a continuous field of relationships, where every action and material participates. Key works include “Pixel” (2025), a painted bronze sculpture of earth; “North Atlantic Still Life with Taito Overlords” (2026); “Everything” (2024), a sculpture with sensors responding to its environment; and “10,000 Things” (2026), a large canvas. Tyson discusses how his worldview evolved through philosophy, Eastern mysticism, science, and quantum mechanics, and how he uses systems to interrupt his own habits. He emphasizes that unpredictability is central to human experience, and that art should remain deeply human, not fetishize technology. The exhibition also features Nature Paintings where chemical reactions and fluid dynamics become collaborators. Tyson reflects on still life as a genre where different systems collide, and on his desire to make invisible forces visible. He mentions a potential future project in Paris focused on his “Hello World” works.