Michael Joo is one of America’s most enigmatic artists. He is a conceptual interdisciplinary artist who works in video, performance, sculpture, installation, drawing, printmaking and NFTs. His works explore identity, politics, and science. Joo knows how to transfer universal truth into art. For him, it’s all about research, and the use of materials, new ways of looking, and deconstructing. His cyclical approach is documentation of process.

Joo said, “I think Art is one of the last arenas and last areas that define a kind of specialization. The process of making art, is an examination, or a view, into ourselves–or where we are at a particular moment…In many ways, with the best of art, some of the boundaries between I and we and you dissolve into a place where intentionality, process, author, and viewers disappear. And I think, in that place, important questions can be asked that don’t get asked in certain other disciplines or practices.” Making art is a view of humanity in the moment.

Joo often explores through narrative, place, people, and objects as I saw in his exhibition entitled Barrier Island. SCAD commissioned Joo to research Sapelo Island in Georgia, one of the last Gullah-Geechee communities in the world. From his exploration into the island’s creation and destruction, Joo created mesmerizing work into the inner workings of a place.

His series, or caloric paintings, Entasis, is a collection of “paintings” made with silver nitrate and ink. Joo took photos of sections of the trees on the island with a 25’ tripod; then pieced them together using the process of entasis to correct the curvature. As these canvases hang, they go through their own entropy and eventually fade away.

One of the earliest building materials on the island was tabby, as referenced in Tabby Wall. Ancient Native American oyster shell rings date back to 2170 BC. Historically, a compacted landmass of sawdust was created because of radical deforestation and logging on the island which eroded the tabby structures. That Which Evaporates All Around Us represents these landmasses. As sounds recorded on Sapelo pour through the embedded speakers, erosion destroys the sculpture of packed sawdust.

The three marble sculptures depict Prologue (Montclair Danby Vein Cut) and reflect the mansions that were constructed on the island in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Reverse sides of the slabs were treated with silver nitrate to draw out the “family trees” of the slaves that built these plantations and whose descendants still live on the island today.

In 2012, Indivisible won the grand prize at the 9th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. We may relate the 108 riot police shields to clay replicas of unidentified persons’ possessions. The borders symbolize Korean Buddhism with its 6 x 6 x 3 equation. As Joo points out, “In the equation the ‘six causes of suffering’ are multiplied by the ‘six paths of suffering’ (past, present, and future)”. Gravity and suspension create a dependency between the objects which mirrors political discord, but the malleability of clay suggests potential for positive transformation.

In 2022, Joo collaborated with thousands of NFT collectors. Organic Growth: Chrystal Reef #4 sees Joo with Danil Krivoruchko and the OG: CR community create the largest artwork ever to be assembled in a museum. “ …We can see the future of NFT projects—bringing together cutting-edge technology and digital art processing with the experience of decades of art in the traditional world.”

More about Joo can be seen at Brilliant Ideas.

Joo is represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery, Galeria Hilario Gelguerqu, and Kukje Gallery.

 

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