“Gezhi Laboratory: Tech-Art and Future City” is the first exhibition held after the “Urban Art & Social Lab @Shenzhen”, a joint initiative launched by Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum and the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art, in 2026.

By building a platform bridging “art museum and art academy”, “Urban Art & Social Lab @Shenzhen” defines its core mission as rooting itself in Shenzhen, a pioneering city and frontier site, cultivating “urban art” on the basis of the urban characteristic of Shenzhen, and establishing a long-term practical framework known as “Future City × Art—Scientific Research—Sci-Fi”.

This exhibition brings the two core notions of “Gezhi” (investigation of things)and “Experiment” into juxtaposition in the context of “tech-art” and “future city” for extensive discussions against a broader backdrop of mutual exchanges between Eastern and Western civilizations. “Gezhi” derives from the Confucian idea of “Gewu Zhizhi” (from The Great Learning of the Four Books of Confucianism). During the modern influx of Western learning into China, the term also functioned as an early counterpart for “science” entering the Chinese vocabulary, which should be linked to the modern and contemporary worldview after the “Scientific Revolution” represented by “experiments”, a perspective that still stands as one of cornerstones supporting the prevailing epistemology and methodology of modern life to date.

However, the rapid technological advances today, particularly in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, pose profound challenges to the absolute state of a laboratory that detached from human minds and nature. At this point, the exhibition introduces the concept of “Gezhi” as an inspirational element, drawing on both its layered historical heritage and its inherent, untapped potential. The practice of “Gewu Zhizhi”—moving from engagement with the external world and deeds toward the formation of inner knowledge—leads us to the “uprightness and integrity” and “self-cultivation, regulating the family, governing the state, and bringing peace to all-under-heaven”, which is always bound to morality of individuals and the responsibility of the society, suggesting an exhaustive inquiry into principles and human nature to apprehend the mandate of existence, rather than a purely parametric technological regime decoupled from humanity. This worldview, which holds that the “Dao is never distant from human life”, would help expand our understanding of “experiments” and even of the world and life, alongside our visions of future.

Since 2023, Guan Shanyue Art Museum has integrated frontier themes, such as the digital industry, digital art, artificial intelligence, etc., into its academic agenda, gradually constructing a research system and academic brand anchored in “art + technology”. As the first exhibition of the “Urban Art & Social Lab @Shenzhen Research Project Series”, Gezhi Laboratory: Tech-Art and Future City offers a concentrated expression of this academic path, as a collaborative attempt with leading research institutions and benchmark technology enterprises in Shenzhen, including Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, China Merchants Research Institute of Advanced Technology, Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen), Seeed Technology, Chaihuo MakerSpace, BGI Genomics, etc., to spark an in-depth idea experiment taking the city as its methodology and future as its orientation in this specific urban context of Shenzhen.

When it expands to the site of China, 2026 marks the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, in which China is putting forward systematic strategies in frontier fields such as AI, quantum technology, biomanufacturing, etc., fostering a new landscape where cultural production will be driven by technological innovation. In this context, “tech-art” has become an experimental arena connecting “scientific rationality” and “humanistic perception” beyond a cultural topic. In recent years, China has continued to promote the deep integration of culture and technology, emphasizing the use of digital and information technologies to empower cultural development and facilitate the application of scientific and technological innovations in the cultural sector, thereby providing important policy guidance for the coordinated development of culture and technology. This guiding strategy provides a clear direction for the innovation development of art and technology, and endows tech-art with a profound era-oriented mission and awareness of such a question: how to build a multi-dimensional interactive framework connecting culture, technology and industry, and construct a long-term virtuous cycle in which they integrate and enhance one another in a dynamic manner? How can we explore new paths for tech-art integration to develop novel interdisciplinary expressions, and further advance the symbiotic and mutually beneficial development of technology and humanity?

By Liu Tian, Wu Shini, Hu Wei

Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum

the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art

October 2026

As generative artificial intelligence turns into a necessity of our everyday life, we may have forgotten that life itself—including our own—is the oldest generative phenomenon on this planet, unfolding in motion for billions of years. Based on the concept of “generativity”, this section brings together two technologies widely honored as the most revolutionarily potential in the twenty-first century: artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which presents both works generated by artists using AI and interim outcomes from collaborations between artists and synthetic biology research teams. A thought-provoking question thus arises: what distinguishes the “generative” processes in artworks, AI, and biological experiments? And when confronted with both the precision of engineering design and the uncontrollability of “generativity”, what does it mean to “create” toward the unknown?

出品人：陈俊宇 李凯生 刘陈立

学术顾问：邱志杰 管怀宾 高世强 丁宁 朱荣远 周红玫 刘晓都 吴岩 冯梦波 陈超 沈少民

总策展人：刘畑 伍诗妮 易啸

策展人：刘慕仪 黄淞浩

联合策展人：胡伟 黄颖

执行策展人：李想 林小桐 林希哲

策展团队：张何心 张启悦 黄逸儿 范辰瑄

项目总监：陈麒仲 王坚

项目统筹：肖竹青 周怡 陈红娟 程平

宣传统筹：刘乐

公共教育统筹：薛扬 谢先良 梁佳阳 邱雪仪

藏品统筹：丁澜翔 陈博 韩啸

行政统筹：肖晓辉 罗希 郑丹琦 汪轩怡

技术支持：黎子越

财务统筹：朱揭峰 汪小涵 彭睿璇 马月玲

艺术档案：曹玉洁

安全保障：雷鸣 郑岩 何春梅

参展艺术家（以姓氏拼音首字母排序）

蔡宇潇&雷聆&沈临枫 曹澍&蒋恒 邓碧文 凤梨三明治 黄咏瑶 后界面：雷宏才+徐子钦 科学+艺术联合实验室&招商局先进技术研究院 空间多媒体实验室 马良 祁震 邵若栩 王志鹏 武子杨&蒙胜宇 许嘉 许毅博 薛峰 叶楠 张海超 张京华 朱力行 朱玺

主办单位

深圳市关山月美术馆 中国美术学院跨媒体艺术学院 中国科学院深圳先进技术研究院深圳合成生物学创新研究院

承办单位

深圳·城市艺术实验室 中国美术学院跨媒体艺术学院当代艺术与社会思想研究所 上海市静安雷电所跨媒介艺术中心 深圳市人工智能与机器人研究院 招商局先进技术研究院

协办单位

南方科技大学科学与人类想象力研究中心 南方科技大学科幻创作与产业化研究中心 矽递科技

特别支持

南方科技大学（深圳）天津美术学院 中央美术学院实验艺术与科技艺术学院 广州美术学院湾区创新学院 四川美术学院实验艺术学院 鲁迅美术学院跨媒体艺术学院 上海风语筑文化科技股份有限公司 柴火创客空间 天与ARTECH 华大基因

特别鸣谢

深圳市洲明科技股份有限公司

上海特锐艺术展览服务股份有限公司