Artists who work with technology are typically viewed as nerds sequestered in studios filled with hardware, gadgetry, and complex wiring. But WangShui, an artist who made their name on innovative abstract paintings made with the assistance of AI, positions themself less as a geek than a hermit with a romantic worldview. “To me, being an artist is a spiritual project, and it always has been, no matter what tools I’ve used,” they told me during a visit to their New York studio earlier this year.

By way of example, WangShui pointed to works made for the 2022 Whitney Biennial. In a darkened gallery, WangShui exhibited gigantic aluminum panels painted with spidery, bluish strokes of oil. Up above, on the ceiling, hung a large LED screen that featured abstract imagery based on fungi, cancerous cells, and other matter that was spit out by learning models. Conceiving the piece, titled Scr∴ pe II (Isle of Vitr∴ ous), involved no small amount of emergent technology—but when WangShui actually got around to painting the installation’s aluminum panels, in the barn of an Upstate New York cow farm, the artist didn’t even have a WiFi connection.

“People would be so shocked when they would visit because of the contrast of the work” with the studio’s setting, they said. “But to me, that’s so much a part of i...