Artist Statement
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I am a self-taught artist whose practice is rooted in the pursuit of dynamic balance — between art and life, stillness and movement, the visible and the unseen.
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For more than a decade, my painting was reductive — a deeply introspective practice of simplifying and stripping away every extraneous mark until only the essential remained. After years of inward exploration I have experienced expansion as a result of my contraction in an on going series of paintings called Natural Progression.
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Natural Progression began with humble moments — a sunrise, a patch of cactus along the sidewalk, a halved strawberry — that were painted in enormous scale. Paintings whose effort was to make you feel the magic of what it was like to first bite into a strawberry for the first time and savor its sweetness, and admire the color gradient hidden at its heart.
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From these observations, I created expansive fields of color, transforming my signature calligraphic mark-making into emphatic expressions of stillness and movement happening simultaneously.
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My personal lived experience mirrored the transformation I experienced in developing Natural Progression as paintings. And this series became my purview for living, and connected my art and life in an extraordinary way. The two move separately, but inform each other. One is fuel for the other, a symbiotic dance, a virtuous cycle.
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The living is becoming anchored with my yoga practice and the philosophy behind it, as well as the similarly ancient wisdom from Taoism. I have found my self in alignment with much of their time tested truths and feel grounded by their enduring nature. In some ways I hope that my work (paintings) might be able to evoke the sensation of living in this way because that's how they are coming to be.
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Artist Bio
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Mike Han was born in Ann Arbor, MI in 1984 to Korean immigrants. His mother landed in Detroit's Cass Corridor and his father in Ypsilanti, MI, both during the early 70's. Mike is a Cheongju Han, also referred to as "House of Han", a noble Korean family (yangban) with royal ancestry dating back 1000 years. As a Cheongju Han, Mike is related to six Korean queens, and master calligrapher Han Seok Bong.
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Mike has lived all over the US, but for several of his formative years he lived in Connecticut and got to experience NYC during the late 80s and early 90s. The graffiti that layered the city and experiencing Haring's Pop Shop in Soho proved to be a huge inspiration for Han as an artist. As he grew older, he started to appreciate the Mid-Century Modern masterpieces he had the great privilege of living with as his father worked for Herman Miller prior to the Knoll. Han would be remiss not to credit Noguchi, Eames, and Mies Van der Rohe, for their influence on his work as well.
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Although his upbringing surrounded him with great art and design, Mike didn't consider himself an artist until a soul searching trip he made to Korea with his parents in 2008 after nearly taking his own life with an attempted suicide while away at college. In Korea he learned about his heritage and began to appreciate it for the first time. While in Korea, his aunt offered him the opportunity to exhibit in a group show as she saw Mike's creative spirit. At the age of 25, Mike's work was shown in Ssamziegil a creative space in Insdong Korea for the first time.
In Korea Mike was witness to a master calligrapher painting during a demonstration and was captivated by the craftsman on the street carving his name into a small wood block to be used as his official signature at the bank. He fell in love with craft in Korea, the traditional architecture, and was overwhelmed by the food. He felt a deep connection to a part of himself that he shunned from 5th grade through college as he aspired to assimilate to white culture with the hope of being accepted as an American.
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As an artist Han has been working to rebuild his identity and confidence in his person and his culture(s) as an American with Korean heritage.
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Mike has exhibited artwork in LA, Seoul, Detroit, and Miami. He has created work for clients in NYC, Chicago, and Osaka. He has been commissioned to paint in Florence, Italy for Pitti Uomo, Bloomingdale's 150th Anniversary for their iconic windows, Shinola's flagship store, the Detroit Pistons, Google for Startups, Ford Motor Co., Fiat, LinkedIn, Somerset Collection, and has also created art installations for Red Bull, vitaminwater, and ArtPrize.
Han has had paintings acquired by Mercedes Benz Financial Services, Huntington Bank HQ, Henry Ford Health Systems, Shinola Hotel, The Daxton Hotel, and Paramount Pictures for use in a feature film. He has collaborated with brands like Carhartt, Eleven Madison Home, MarxModa (on MillerKnoll products), Model No. Furniture, SEE Eyewear, Leon Speakers, Gardner White Furniture, Coffeehaus, and Mothfire Beer.
​Mike has made the front page of the Detroit News and the cover of SEEN Magazine, has been featured on BBC World News, Dwell, Cool Hunting, designboom, Architecture's Digest, World of Interiors, Apartment Therapy, Design Milk, Cultured Mag, Urban Outfitters Blog, Detroit Home, Live in the D, and the Detroit Free Press.
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Mike has been an awards juror for ArtPrize, Ann Arbor Street Art Fair (The Original), as well as The CSCA's Creative Best Awards. Han was the recipient of a Red Bull Micro Grant and an Art Prize Equity Grant. He is currently a steering committee member of the Detroit Partnership for Arts Education and Official Creative for the AASAF.
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Since 2021, Han has helped raise over $350,000 for charitable causes in his effort to make a positive impact with his artistic practice connecting his artwork tangibly to its purpose. Han's artwork is prominently displayed in the Korean American Foundation's office in Los Angeles and the Ktown YMCA. Mike has been featured on The Good Life Project podcast, was the keynote speaker for the 2023 APACC Detroit Gala, was a guest speaker for a Strategic Staffing Solutions all hands meeting.
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Han is currently living and working out of Santa Monica, CA. and keeps a studio in Detroit for projects in his hometown.​