Michael Joo Reflects on Career at Space ZeroOne After Sculpture Collapse
On a recent quiet, cloudy afternoon in Tribeca, artist Michael Joo and I crouched beside a tower of aluminum baking trays. The towers covered a whole section of Space ZeroOne, the Hanwha Foundation of Culture’s new institutional initiative. The gallery was otherwise empty. Joo moved slowly between the columns of trays, occasionally bending down to peer into one, or pointing to the glass walls between stacks that turned the towers into makeshift vitrines, remembering where he had picked up the VHS tapes, the Kara Walker drawings, and the bits of fossilized wood, among other ephemera. Related Articles From across the room, the installation looks architectural. Up close, it’s more like drawers in an archive that Joo has been building for decades. “These are baking trays from 100 years of New York cooking,” Joo said, running a hand lightly along one rim. “All of them were used. All of them have fed countless people.” The trays form the backbone of Concatenations, the central work in Joo’s exhibition “Sweat Models 1991–2026.” The show, which opened February 20, …
