Material Matters : An Interview With Michael Joo

Rajesh Punj

For Michael Joo the material matter of his works is as much about what is calculated, as that which comes by chance. Creating these physical portraits as part of the Radiohalo exhibition, that are less straight representations of individuals but more anatomical investigations into their lives. As some of their most basis actions; walking, driving, standing or lying
down become the calorie induced evidence of their existence.

The measure of Michael Joo’s choice of words could be likened to the objects he creates as artworks, as his ideas assemble as material parts of his creative and corrosive experiments. Art as a science, Joo’s approach is as inventive in the impulsive sense as it appears entirely considered. Employing techniques that deserve as much time and attention as anything that happens in the moment. Including crafting canvases that have been diluted in a bath of silver nitrate, that for their machine aesthetic appear as these haunting historical documents to the original actions of the individual and the artist. Which as evidence of something more industrial, hashis two-dimensional works appear as these darkened panels that have as much of the pathos and panic as anything by American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. But are by Joo’s own admission much
more scientific and less emotional exercises.