Michael Joo: Sweat Models 1991-2026

Michael Joo (b. 1966, Ithaca, NY; lives and works in New York City) has spent over three decades creating artwork informed by multiple disciplines including technology, science, architecture, and environmental studies. His early 1990s practice drew directly from undergraduate studies in biology, treating the laboratory and kitchen as spaces of knowledge production similar to the artist's studio. Joo employs scientific rigor—modes of measurement and consumption—alongside industrial materials, research equipment, and kitchen supplies to interrogate abstraction and distance. His works use synthetic sweat and tears as replenishable analogues for bodily fluids, addressing human vulnerability and the fragility of identity construction without depicting the body explicitly. Through materials imbued with flavor or smell and precise measurement systems, Joo presents the body and society as something moving too rapidly to fully comprehend.