Michael Joo Korean-American, b. 1966

Michael Joo is a conceptual artist whose work is rooted in an examination of perception. He is more interested in the way we perceive than what it is we are looking at.

Joo’s multi-disciplinary studio practice mobilizes intense scientific research, ontology, epistemology, and entropy, creating a cross-disciplinary and multidimensional dialogue that results in aesthetic phenomena that document the process of their creation. The hybrid aspect of Joo’s aesthetic language reflects his own history. Born to Korean parents in the United States, Joo was raised in a multicultural environment that was influenced by a range of interests including science, academia, and artistry.

By juxtaposing humanity’s various pools of knowledge and culture, Joo addresses the fluid nature of identity, mirroring the complexity and richness of his individual identity and of the collective identity of contemporary society.

By combining a range of techniques associated with sculpture, painting, photography, and printmaking, the work continually blurs the boundaries between art and science. Joo’s intention as an artist is to achieve the unachievable: to make us see an object in real life that is barely conceivable as thought alone.

Major exhibitions of Joo's work include Perspectives: Michael Joo, Smithsonian Freer | Sackler Museum, Washington, DC, USA; 49th Venice Biennale, Korean Pavilion, Italy; Sensory Meridian, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA; Michael Joo, Conserving Momentum (Egg/Gyro/Laundry Room), White Cube London, UK; Michael Joo: Drift, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, USA; Michael Joo: Drift (Bronx), The Bronx Museum of Arts, New York, NY, USA; Michael Joo, Doppelganger, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Sussex, UK; and Michael Joo Retrospective, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, CA, USA. Joo is a Senior Critic in Sculpture at Yale University and teaches in the Columbia University MFA program. His work is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Denver Art Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, among others.