Michael Joaquin Grey

Michael Joaquin Grey (1961) is a two-time Whitney Biennial participant whose work plays with the bridged boundaries between art, science, and media. He holds a degree from the University of California Berkeley in art and genetics, as well as a MFA from Yale. In addition to being an artist, inventor, and educator, Grey is also the designer of a toy called ZOOB, a biological version of the Lego. He lives in San Francisco and New York.

“Informed by scientific and linguistic principles, family relationships and the technologizing of human life, Grey’s works partake of a shifting and adaptive approach to esthetics and imagery. These elements combine to strike a balance between the accessible and the esoteric.” —Ostrow, Saul. 2009. Michael Joaquin Grey: P.S. 1. Art in America 97, no. 10: 194-196.

“I don’t use logic as the first principle, I use my intuition and allude to observation. In hindsight I see if there is an intelligence to my intuition which can be reviewed with scientific methods and if necessary replicated and verified.” —Asmuth, Thomas. “A conversation with Michael Joaquin Grey.” Switch 23.

“What I began to see was why it was so hard for our culture to see art and technology together. Why there is this schism. Most of it I think is because of the specialization and parsimony of different markets and communities.” —Asmuth, Thomas. “A conversation with Michael Joaquin Grey.” Switch 23.

“I have developed the Citroid system and ZOOB play system as a pedagogic Trojan horse to introduce learning and play for both the bottom up and top down learning processes. I felt without the pedagogic foundation for my work, I would always be stuck in the hermetic high culture limits of explanation, exploitation and connoisseurship.” —Asmuth, Thomas. “A conversation with Michael Joaquin Grey.” Switch 23.

“On a certain level, it’s really very simple, I’m just trying to figure out where I come from.” —Edward A. Shanken, “From Drips to ZOOBs: The Cosmology of Artist/Inventor Michael Grey,” Art Byte 1:3. August-September, 1998.

Michael Joaquin Grey
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