Michael Joo for Gradient Canvas
Who is Michael Joo?
Joo is a New York-based Korean American artist known for using a wide range of media and materials. His work often bridges creative and scientific approaches, inviting viewers to reconsider how technology shapes our understanding of the natural world and ourselves.
How does he approach materials and research?
Joo’s materials are as varied as his investigations, his works have incorporated everything from human sweat and bamboo to silver nitrate.
His practice highlights the complexity of perception and the ways technological and natural systems continuously influence one another.
EP Flow by Michael Joo by Henrik Kam 2025
What inspired these flowing bands of color?
The vivid, striated bands in EP Flow originate from gel electrophoresis, a laboratory technique used to visualize molecules such as DNA. It was a method familiar to Joo from childhood—his mother was a plant geneticist, and he often visited her in the lab.
This scientific imagery becomes a way for him to tell her story.
EP Flow by Michael Joo by ©Henrik Kam 2025
How does a life become a color palette?
Joo selected key moments from his mother’s life: her emigration from Seoul to Mississippi in 1962, her move to the Midwest in the 1970s as an agricultural scientist, and her return to Korea decades later for humanitarian food-security work.
Artwork for Creative Playbook by Michael Joo
For each moment, he gathered environmental data, humidity, temperature, and other atmospheric details, and prompted Gemini to translate these measurements into a corresponding set of colors.
EP Flow by Michael Joo by ©Henrik Kam 2025
What happens when memories turn into material
When layered together, these colors form a visual timeline that traces a life across continents and decades.
EP Flow by Michael Joo by ©Henrik Kam 2025
The artwork becomes a bridge between personal history and scientific process, transforming data into image in a way that, as Joo describes, “lets the memory become material.”
Learn more about Gradient Canopy here.
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