Can’t Help Myself by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu

In Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s can’t help myself, an industrial robot turns and flexes restlessly, programmed to ensure that a thick, deep red liquid stays within a predetermined area. part of the the international art exhibition may you live in interesting times, curated by ralph rugoff for the 2019 venice art biennale, the robot is placed within a transparent ‘cage’, almost like a creature captured and put on display. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu have programmed the robot in can’t help myself to keep the thick, deep red liquid within a predetermined area. this blood-like fluid continually oozes away, triggering the robot’s sensors and prompting the machine to shovel it back into place. the artists have ‘taught’ the robot to perform 32 different movements – from ‘scratch an itch’ to ‘ass shake’ – giving it an uncanny, mesmerizing human grace. for sun yuan and peng yu the uncontrollable liquid that the machine keeps trying to contain conjures what they perceive to be art’s essential elusiveness, its defiant refusal to being pinned down and fixed in place. This work was originally produced for the exhibition “Tales of our time“ at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. At the moment it’s viewing is still available in Venice, Biennale Arte 2019.