An engineer-turned-conceptual-artist, Michael grew up in China under the influence of the Buddhist and Taoist teachings.  He studied computer science in Tsinghua, the top University in China. At dawning of the Internet, he was in Silicon Valley designing computer software for the internet infrastructure, including the first internet access router.  Later he quit his high-tech job to study art at San Francisco Art Institute with a Merit Scholarship. His mentors included Paul Kos, one of the founders of the Conceptual Art Movement in San Francisco. While at school, he became a fellow at the prestigious artist residencies at MacDowell and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He worked with Xu Bing while at Skowhegan.

His general interest is in ontological explorations. He has a regular practice of Ch’an Buddhism 禅宗, meditation and yoga, which has a profound influence on his art. He believes that everything in life has its own unique causal validity. 

His art is primarily focused on cultivating viewer's awareness of their own perceptual process. By reconstituting the formal and cultural elements of a situation, his work points to the poetic and transcendent moments inherent in daily life.  Conceptual in nature, his work often takes the form of performance, site-specific installation, and drawings.

Michael has exhibited his work worldwide, including in the Baltic Triennial at the Institute of Contemporary Art/London, Vancouver Biennale, OSTEN Biennial of Drawing Skopje/National Gallery of N. Macedonia, Portland Museum of Art Biennial/USA, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria/Canada, Macao Museum of Art/China, SAVVY Contemporary/Berlin, Berkeley Art Museum/USA, as well as in Marina Abramovic Institute West, Contemporary Jewish Museum, de Young Museum, 500 Capp Street, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, all in San Francisco.

His works have been featured in books including ⟪In the present moment - Buddhism, contemporary art, and social practice⟫ by Haema Sivanesan, and reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Yishu, Artweek, Shotgun Review, San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, The BayCitizen, Portland Phoenix, Neue Rheinische Zeitung and Rheinische Post in Germany, Lietuvos Zinios and Lietuvos Rytas in Lithuania, and the Artists Magazine in Taiwan, among others.