Carolina Nitsch is pleased to announce Seven Sins, a suite of new prints and an accompanying site specific sculpture, by Michael Joo. This is the artist’s first exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room.

Joo’s images in this body of work derive from a long running series of stamped numbers on baking trays, which are calculations of expended calories while performing various actions. These tasks refer, by way of their title, to those which one might engaged in while performing each of the seven sins. The project takes a scientific approach to studying how much energy is used while one is involved in pride, envy, wrath, etc. Images of these trays were then screen printed onto paper with transparent epoxy, then treated with silver nitrate and then finally sealed with a urethane coating to stabilize their unique qualities.

The site-specific sculpture in the project room consists of a stack of used baking trays that engage the architecture of the space by ascending to the ceiling. This tower nearly reaches the upper limit before being compressed back and held in place. These trays echo the ghost like images of the prints while also alluding to the passage of time and energy.

Michael’s work utilizes many different techniques and materials and often takes it’s starting point with a scientific and/or methodical approach whose emphasis is on process and documentation. This series aims to draw attention to the miniscule chemical processes that happen in fleeting moments throughout one’s day. His object seems to be to make physical what is normally hidden or not obvious. “As a sculptor, I have been preoccupied with spaces and the time it takes for us to move through them, how the things we bring to them—from ourselves, to our objects, to our intentions and perceptions of them—can expand, how we locate ourselves in the present,” Joo said.

Michael Joo received his MFA from the Yale School of Art, Yale University, New Haven, in 1991, after graduating with a BFA from Washington University, St Louis, 1989.

Solo exhibitions of his include: Radiohalo, Blain|Southern, London (2016); Drift (Bronx), The Bronx Museum of Arts, New York (2014); Transparency Engine, SCAD Moot Gallery, Sham Shui Po (2014); Solo presentation of Doppelganger, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood (2014); Michael Joo: Drift, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut 2014); Michael Joo, M Building, Art Basel Miami Beach 2013, Miami (2013); Exit from the House of Being, Blain|Southern, London (2012); Galerie Marabini, Bologna, (2010); Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY (2009).

Michael has participated in the EVA International Biennale, curated by Koyo Kouoh in Limerick, Ireland and, and has current solo exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, as well as the Freer/Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C."