Zebra Sculpture
Epoxy putty modeled on taxidermy frame, painted with waterborne automotive paints



Tree, oak and stainless steel, 2001



The official installation images of Damien Hirst and Michael Joo‘s current exhibtion, ‘Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?‘ at Berlin’s Haunch of Venison

Michael Joo (born 1966, Ithaca, New York) focuses in his work on the processes through which visible entities (like the human body, or flora and fauna in nature) consume invisible calories, and the crystallized byproducts generated by these processes. Joo received his B.F.A. at Washington University and M.F.A. at Yale School of Art.

He lives and works in New York and represented Korea at the Venice Art Biennial in 2001. In his works, Joo demonstrates the forms that can be assumed by one’s own mental and bodily efforts in the act of bearing witness to one’s historical and cultural identity.

In other words, Joo combines making art with the apparently scientific theme of production of matter-energy and with the expenditure of calories of the human being during physical and psychological effort to achieve a state of diversity. In this way, Joo gives concrete visible form to units of mental thought and physical reaction, breaking down the confines between the results of natural phenomena and artistic production.