Michael Joo

Michael Joo (b. 1966, Ithaca, NY) has long operated at the intersection of technology, identity, and material culture. Working across sculpture, painting, photography, and installation, he draws on systems of classification and measurement, the language of laboratory research, and the contradictions embedded in data-driven thinking. The exhibition traces how this approach took shape in the 1990s and how, over time, it expanded beyond the individual body toward broader philosophical questions informed by both Western and non-Western traditions.

His work is held in numerous public collections worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum; Denver Art Museum; Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York; Guggenheim Museum; Harvard Art Museums; Savannah College of Art and Design; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; UCLA Hammer Museum; Walker Art Center; and Whitney Museum of American Art. Major exhibitions include Perspectives: Michael Joo, Smithsonian Freer | Sackler Museum, Washington, DC; 49th Venice Biennale, Korean Pavilion; Sensory Meridian, Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Michael Joo: Conserving Momentum (Egg/Gyro/Laundry Room), White Cube, London; Michael Joo: Drift, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Michael Joo: Drift (Bronx), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Michael Joo: Doppelgänger, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Sussex, UK; Michael Joo, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Michael Joo Still Lives, BOHEN Foundation, New York; and Michael Joo Retrospective, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL.