A large sculpture by Korean American artist Michael Joo collapsed after an accident, reportedly caused by a careless visitor, during the February 20 opening of his exhibition “Sweat Models 1991–2006,” at New York’s Space ZeroOne.
The collapse of the piece Saltiness of Greatness (1992) injured four, who were taken to the emergency room via ambulance, according to a report in Seoul Economic Daily. The piece reportedly consists of stacks of compressed salt and, per a 2004 Francine Koslow Miller Artforum review of an MIT List Visual Arts Center survey in which it appeared, “charts the relative energy consumption and expenditure of Genghis Khan, Tokyo Rose, Bruce Lee, and Mao Tse-tung during their respective ‘reigns.’”
Joo, who lives in New York, has long used organic materials including urine, sweat, seeds, and deer both living and dead “to explore themes of transformation, evolution, and shamanism” in works in various mediums, according to Artforum.
Injured parties (all unnamed) included a Korean artist; a gallerist; a curator who is also a professor at a New York university; and a Hanwha Foundation board member, per the Seoul Economic Daily. The injuries included a hairline fracture and abrasions.
“We regret that an unexpected situation occurred during the opening, resulting in minor injuries to some visitors,” a foundation spokesperson told the Korean publication. “We took immediate action on site and are currently reviewing the situation according to relevant procedures,” said the spokesperson, adding, “We will re-examine the overall viewing environment and continue to take necessary measures for safer and more stable operations.”
Michael Joo in 2010.
XAMAX/ullstein bild via Getty Images
A post on Threads shows the aftermath of the incident, with fragments of the sculpture on the floor.
Located at 371 Broadway in Tribeca, the gallery opened its first exhibition, of emerging Korean artists in New York, in November. Its website currently indicates that it is “closed through the weekend,” adding, “We look forward to welcoming you back soon.” The gallery did not immediately answer a request for further information.
Space ZeroOne is a project of the Hanwha Foundation of Culture. Based in the South Korean capital and established in 2007, the foundation is also collaborating with Paris’s Centre Pompidou on a new art museum, the Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul. It administers the Youngmin International residency grant, supporting Korean artists at residencies worldwide. The Joo show was organized by guest curator Christopher Y. Lew for C/O: Curatorial Office, the New York firm he founded in partnership with Wassan Al-Khudhairi.
Hanwha Foundation has come under scrutiny for links to the Israeli Defense Forces on the part of its parent, the Hanwha Group, a corporate conglomerate that, the Art Newspaper reported last year, is worth some $56.7 billion and includes weapons manufacturing and defense systems through its subsidiary Hanwha Aerospace. Time Magazine dubbed Hanwha “the Lockheed Martin of Asia.” Artnet News recently reported that the activist group Korean Cultural Alliance for Palestine claims the company is using the gallery for the purposes of “art washing.”
Joo’s work is held in the collections of New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Denver Art Museum, the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, among others. Along with his countryman Do Ho Suh, he represented South Korea in the Venice Biennale in 2001. Museums including the Smithsonian’s Freer-Sackler Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, and the Bronx Museum of Arts have staged exhibitions of his work.
Writing for ARTnews in 2017, Lilly Wei described a Joo exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah as “pensive and beautiful.”
