More about Do Ho Suh

Works by Do Ho Suh

Emily Browne

Contributor

Do Ho Suh’s art will make you second guess your own eyes and consequently second guess your whole life.

You’ll look at it from afar, get really confused, rub your eyes and look again to no avail. As soon as you get close enough, you’ll realize his sculptures are made of semitransparent fabrics in a variety of different Easter-y colors. But if you’re like me and you thought it was a video projection at first, then you’ll be thrown headfirst into a semantics crisis when you realize what’s really goin’ on.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Do Ho Suh had dreams of becoming a marine biologist as it was “the passion of [his] life.” But this passion eventually gave way to dreams of becoming an artist so he got his BFA and MFA in Korea before he did his two years of mandatory military service --  an experience that took a dump on his psyche while simultaneously inspiring one of his best works, Some/One (2001). After this, he moved to the United States to attend RISD and then Yale University. A real smarty, this one.

Suh was obsessed with the idea of making his home transportable because he is always moving between his three homes, New York, London and Seoul. He is pretty much constantly homesick for one of the three places. New York especially holds a special place in his heart because of his sweet, elderly landlord who lives upstairs and dotes on Suh like a son. Seriously ,their interactions just make you feel all the feels. His landlord eventually passed away, leading Suh to make Staircase- III as a tribute to the man upstairs (the landlord not God to be clear). Home is where the art is, I suppose.

 

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Here is what Wikipedia says about Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh (Korean: 서도호; Hanja: 徐道濩; born 1962) is a South Korean artist who works primarily in sculpture, installation, and drawing. Suh is well known for re-creating architectural structures and objects using fabric in what the artist describes as an "act of memorialization." After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Seoul National University in Korean painting, Suh began experimenting with sculpture and installation while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from RISD in 1994, and went on to Yale where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture in 1997. He practiced for over a decade in New York before moving to London in 2010. Suh regularly shows his work around the world, including Venice where he represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2017, Suh was the recipient of the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts. Suh currently lives and works in London.

Suh's work focuses on the different ways architecture mediates the experience of space. Architecture has been a key reference for the artist since the mid-1990s—even for pieces like Floor (1997–2000) that do not resemble buildings. As a result, Suh pays particular attention to the site-specificity of the work, and sensorial experience of the viewer engaging with his pieces while moving in the exhibition space. A number of his sculptures produced in the past few decades consider the possibilities for sculpture to become architecture, and vice-versa. His blurring of the line between sculpture and architecture often renders architectural structures portable through material change, as exemplified by one of his most famous works Seoul Home...(1999), for which he recreated his childhood home using polyester and silk. Suh's use of fabric and paper functioning like a "second skin" make it possible for his pieces to be folded up and transported. His material choices of rice paper, and fabric commonly found in hanbok also refer to traditional Korean art and architecture.

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