ART CITIES:Hong Kong- Do Ho Suh
Born in Seoul, Do Ho Suh transforms his personal experiences into artworks, particularly his move from South Korea to the USA in 1993, as well as the specific domestic spaces where he has lived, including his childhood home, a house in Rhode Island where he lived as a student, and his apartment in London. Transparency, or the oscillation between opacity and visibility, appears throughout much of the artist’s work, evoking the layering of space and intermediate areas in Korean architecture.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
Do Ho Suh first began rendering domestic structures in 1994, an impulse turned into life’s work. Suh also weaves transparent structures made of monochrome polyester, at once luminous, architectural, and ephemeral, inviting viewers to wander through their dreamlike interior passageways (which might be replete with toilets and light switches). These transplanted homes are playful and imaginative but also deeply melancholy in their manifestation of disorientation: as impressions of the many residences in which Suh and his family have lived, they testify to the global and poignantly elusive nature of “home” as seen through the artist’s eyes. Do Ho Suh presents his solo exhibition “Passage/s” at Lehman Maupin Gallery in Hong kong, the artist premiere a three-channel video installation, “Passage/s: The Pram Project”, and new drawings. The video “Passage/s: The Pram Project” (2014-16) uses a homespun wide-angle effect projected on three walls, giving a feeling of flowing forward motion. Three go-pro cameras mounted on a pram, capture the artist and his young daughters on outings together in their London neighborhood. The ambient noises of the street and the rattling of the pram punctuate the conversations and chatter between Suh and his daughters. The children’s excitement imbues the dreary London cityscape with a curiosity and wonder shared by Suh, whose worldview had also been recently changed by fatherhood. Suh utilizes film editing, shifting between English and Korean and splicing in imagery from his hometown of Seoul, to comment on his experience of crossing cultural and geographical boundaries, and to express the transient nature of the Suh family’s life. Each of the three channels depicts a different viewpoint from the pram, projected simultaneously, for an immersive perspective and intimate experience of this work, emulative of the artist’s own relationship with his daughters. The exhibition includes a selection of works on paper, rendered in thread, watercolor, and pencil.
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 20/3-13/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-19:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
