Michael Joo
Galerie Anne de Villepoix
11 Rue des Tournelles, Paris
Sept.30. - Nov.11.

Bang your head to this. Michael Joo jumping on a trampoline in sportive white garb, endlessly trying to bang his head on a red/orange square piece of clay fixed to the ceiling. The ceiling in the gallery is too low for this high jumping artist so he had to waste his calories and energy before in a New York loft. The video, taken from above, is projected onto a trampoline. A piece of clay is fixed to the ceiling of the gallery and it shows the marks where his head banged into the soft mass. Photographs taken during his jumps also display the amount of calories you could expend in a lifetime, or in a second. But on what? Bang your head to what, to the rhythm of the art scene?

Horizontal fixed supporting posts are pushing a poster of Bruce Lee to the wall, lit from behind. If the light is out, you only see the white backside of the poster. Bruce Lee, the weightless flying miracle fixed to the wall - back to earth.

What are we doing in our lifetime? Eating, accumulating energy to waste energy, making some imprints with our heads, struggling hard for this. Or are we just flying against all rules of gravity? The photographs at least show Michael Joo at this moment between ceiling and trampoline. Who cares how much energy you have to spend for that moment? Bang your head.

-Rainald Schumacher

Email to:

Michael Joo is a visionary. Some have called him "Salad Boy."

Michael Joo's oblique perspective, albeit somewhat distorted by jumping up and down on a trampoline, has a unique clarity. His astounding take on gravity, energy, and their inexorable junction is terribly exciting. Imagine a world of comprised of spent energy, buzzing about our heads, like Bruce Lee in one of his fantastic movies! How can I sit still? He is genius, purity. I wonder what Michael Jordan would think?

I won't believe it until I see it. I mean, I'd like to see it. Ah, Paris...