Do-Ho Suh

executed in 1999

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

This work is generally in good condition. There are occasional minor accretion on the surface and 3 figures are missing at the edges.
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Elasticity of Space
Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh’s sculptural and installation works are deeply grounded in cultural identity and spatial experience inspired by his own unique migratory experience. Born in 1962, the renowned Korean installation artist had already received his BFA and MFA in Oriental Painting at the Seoul National University and finished his almost two-year military service before moving from Seoul to New York in his late twenties in 1991. This transition is considered by Suh to be a “symbolic and dramatic” point in his life, during which he began to question the many facets of one’s inherent identity within a foreign cultural context, a central theme that reappears throughout his many distinguished installation works featured in the collections of world-classed museums such as Tate Modern, MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Initially trained as a painter, his subsequent BFA study at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and MFA study at Yale University have brought the artist into the realm of sculpture and installation, the two core mediums with which he uses to strategically erase the limit of scale and site; ultimately creating portable, large-scale yet delicately- formed works dealing with issues of personal memory and collective history. Floor Module (Lot 938) from 1999 was specifically created during an early phase in Suh’s career, in which numerous important works emerged. Unlike his other massive pieces such as Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home created in the same year, this work is measured at just 6.5 cm tall and composed of over hundreds of tiny PVC toy figures with their heads and both their hands raised up. On first view, the carpet-like appearance already presents an anti-monumental view to the traditional form of installation.

In order to take a closer look, this army of seemingly defenseless Lilliputians further “demands that the beholder shift his/her orientation from the upright plane of walking to the lateral position of crouching.”¹ The drastic ratio between the size and number of the figures also denotes to the artist’s continual exploration into the relationship between individuality and collective identity. “A tiny plastic figure is very fragile, but a huge number together have a significant weight. It’s collective power. In my work I explore precisely that ambiguity of the ‘herd’: the sense of protection and strength on the one hand, the loss of individuality on the other. […]I wanted to create a contrast between spectator and figures, and make the work blend into the existing architecture. In Korea we refer to men as grains of sand, which is a far cry from humanistic philosophical vision.”²

The aesthetics of the lot on offer can be regarded as an extension to the immersive Floor (1997-2000) commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in which a glass panel is placed above the figures serving as an actual floor, on top of which viewers are invited to walk across. The motif of self- identity, along with its juxtaposition with the dominant Western aesthetics, has contributed to the artist’s distinctive profile in the global art world. The minimalistic quality as seen in the works such as the lot on
offer, have specifically gained praise from critics and curators alike, including art historian Janet Kraynak, who comments, “Suh’s artworks perform an extraordinary elaboration upon the spatial expansion of the sculptural object initiated in postwar art by Minimalism. Conceived as a field rather than a discrete thing, sculpture in Minimalism became experiential, temporal and interactive, directly addressing the
perceptual conditions of the beholder. Minimalism’s transformation of the terms of viewing is both recognised and dramatised in Suh’s art in its continual tweaking of the conditions of beholding.”³

Do Ho Suh’s participation in the two-man exhibition at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 as the representative of Korea, is moreover the perfect affirmation to his exceptional stature within his homeland. With studios based in London, New York, and Seoul, the artist has since utilised this unique state of mobility to continually question the dynamic relationship between the psychological and physical memory of space.

1 Janet Kraynak, “Traveling in Do-Ho Suh’s World”, Do Ho Suh, The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation, 2001
2 “Interview with Priya Malhotra”, Tema Celeste, 2001
3 Refer to 1