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Michael Joo
Michael Joo is an American-Korean contemporary artist born in the year 1966 in upstate NY, Ithaca and later Minnesota.

Early life and education
Michael Joo was born into a Korean family and was always exposed to a generally academic environment due to the fact that his parents were both scientists along with friends and colleagues who carried academic backgrounds. He studied Biology at Wesleyan University and felt a disconnection with the subject and practiced art on the side on his own time while continuing his studies. He later enrolled and received his MFA from the Yale School of Art, Yale University, New Haven in 1991, after graduating with a BFA from Washington University, St.Louis, 1989. Joo took on work in Vienna, Austria at a company that specialized in seed science. He later realizes through art that, contradictions are not only accepted but also desired and sought after. The materials used in his work mirrors the complexity of the topic that Joo experienced early in his childhood which is the topic of modern contemporary society.

Notable Art
As an artist, Michael Joo employs a variety of art forms, such as the media, sculpture, painting, photography, and printmaking. His work reflects on identity, cultural heritage, and natural history. Joo focuses his art work mainly around the ideas of blending contradicting elements: science and religion, nature versus human intervention, reality against fiction, class within culture, and intentionality and accidents.

“Single Breath Transfer”
“Single breath transfer” was an exhibit held from November 30 to December 31, 2017. Joo personally breathing into paper and plastic bags and captured the moment of travel of gases by freezing the bags with liquid nitrogen or wax. The work refers to a medical test that observes the ability of lungs to exchange gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide from the surrounding atmosphere to the capillary blood vessels.

“Still Lives”
This solo exhibition held in 2005 traces the artist’s 18-days 400 mile journey along the route of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. The exhibition consists of life-size caribou sculptures hanging on the wall in a spiral formation with their bellies opened. While images and videos of roads of mountain scenery and sculptures of caribous may remind the theme of the Arctic, he attempted to explore much more philosophical idea through the work. His works melds the idea of geometric and organic, a single perception and the surroundings, and interior and exterior by placing such complementary pieces into a single space and allowing the audience to perceive both experiences simultaneously.

“Visible”
“Visible” is a work of art that displays a headless, transparent buddha statue that is posed on top of a platform. The inside of the statue consists of the recreation of the innards of the human body. The materials that were used for this artwork are materials and ingredients that would seem as if they have been acquired from an industrial laboratory: urethane, nylon, plastic, steel, glass, and painted steel. This work expresses the idea of homogenization and how its effect causes us to seek information that our technology inspires.

“Nunchakas”
Nunchakas is a work that describes an asian weapon, nunchucks, that consists of two wooden clubs attached to each from one end to the other by a chain. Joo substituted the wooden parts of the weapon and instead added in a terra-cotta element where a dense coat of green watercress would grow. This work exemplifies the idea of destruction which is represented by the idea that the work is based off of a weapon, while the watercress signifies growth and life. The overall work shows the idea of yin-yang, life and destruction.

Selected exhibitions and Award
Solo exhibitions

2019: Project: Michael Joo, February,9,2019-March,16,2019, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, US

2017: Michael Joo, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, KR

(forthcoming) Michael Joo, La Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona, ES

Seven Sins, Carolina Nitsch Project Room, New York, NY

2013: Michael Joo, M Building, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013, Miami, US

2009: Anton Kern Gallery, New York, US

Bodhi Obfuscatus (Allegiance), Chelsea Art Museum, New York, US

2006: Michael Joo, Rodin Gallery (Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art), Seoul, KR

Group exhibitions:

Radical Optimism

Deborah Kass, Gerald Williams, Jeffrey Gibson, Mary Sibande, Wadsworth Jarrell, Michael Joo, Tony Tasset

Apr 07 — Apr 20, 2020

2019: Reason Gives No Answers: Selected Works from the Collection, Newport Street Gallery, London, UK

2016: Anyang Public Art Project, Anyang-si, KR

Still (the) Barbarians, Curated by Koyo Kouoh, EVA International Biennale 2016, Limerick, IE

Force of Nature (curated by James Putnam), Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels, BE

2010: Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?, Haunch of Venison, Berlin, DE (with Damien Hirst)

The Infinite Starburst of Your Cold Dark Eyes, PKM Gallery, Seoul, KR

Dirty Kunst, Seventeen Gallery, London, UK

Awards

Awards

2006: United States Artists Fellowship

2006  :Grand Prize, 6th Gwangju Biennale 2006 (with co-recipient Song Dong)

2003: American Center Foundation Grant

2002: LEF Foundation

2001: Warhol Foundation Grant

2000 :Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters' and Sculptors' Grant

1998: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

http://www.pkmgallery.com/artists/michael-joo/biography/