Do Ho Suh
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Do-Ho Suh
“My fathers project was crossing time to bring back that particular style of architecture, and my project was literally to bring that space across the Pacific Ocean into a different culture.” — Do-Ho Suh
Do-Ho Suh is a Korean artist living in New York, USA. His installations focus on many subjects from culture identity, ethic values, and collective consciousness. He used the variety of medias including resin, fabric, thread, and rubber. His background is living in two cities and two cultures, the United States and South Korea.
Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home is a sea-green silk incarnation of the traditional Korean house in which Suh grew up. Its a full-scale replica of his dwellings in Seoul, L.A., New York, and Baltimore. He focuses on every details and fixture such as toilets, the shower head in bathroom, light switches, cabinets, bookshelves, and even appliances. Everything is sewn from sheer curtains of nylon fabric and its very neat. The plumbing is sewn like pockets and sleeves, the toilet like a bodice, and its handle like the finger of a glove. The walls and doors are like the panels of a skirt and the building is a dress. It floats, untouchable, out of place, and out of time. That allows the viewers walk around the freestanding object and simply immerse themselves in the hallucination, which comes visible through the translucent nylon fabric. The wallpaper itself integrates into the logic of clothing and architecture. The fabric fantasy is mute but powerful memorial across the time and space.
The issue of the hand-made is extremely important to Suh and very much comes to him through his family. Suhs mother is an expert on costume and his father is a painter who works with the calligraphy and abstract Expressionism. Suh is interested in the space that moves along with him and the space, which he feels good, protected, comfortable, and liberated, becomes transportable.