Background
Do-Ho Suh was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1962. Suh led an itinerant life, hopping from his family home in Seoul (where his father, Suh Se-ok was a major influence in Korean traditional painting) to his working life in New York.
RISD Rhode Island School of Design
Yale University
Seoul National University
RISD Rhode Island School of Design
Yale University
Seoul National University
Do-Ho Suh was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1962. Suh led an itinerant life, hopping from his family home in Seoul (where his father, Suh Se-ok was a major influence in Korean traditional painting) to his working life in New York.
After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University, and fulfilling his term of mandatory service in the South Korean military, Suh relocated to the United States to continue his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University.
Do Ho Suh works across various media, creating drawings, film, and sculptural works that confront questions of home, physical space, displacement, memory, individuality, and collectivity. His sculptures are architectural in nature and generally are site-specific installations. Suh attempts to draw attention to how viewers of his work inhabit the public space around them. An example is found in his floor sculpture entitled "Some/One", which consisted of a gallery floor covered in dog tags surrounding a hollow suit of armor.
Each piece the artist creates is meant to explore the relationship between individuals and the general public, so his themes are often both spatial and psychological. His works also defy standard notions of scale. One example is "Staircase-III", a life-sized replica of a staircase suspended in an immense empty room, which is located at the Tate Modern in London.
Moreover, Suh represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 before being shown in the Liverpool Biennial in 2010, the Venice Biennale Architecture in 2010, and Media City Seoul Biennial. He has also had major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in 2001, the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2002, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City during 2002 - 2003, the Artsonje Center in Seoul in 2003, and the Hermes Gallery in Tokyo in 2005.
Some of his most famous works include "Fallen Star 1/5" (2008 – 2011), and both "Paratrooper-II" and "Paratrooper-V", created in 2005. His work can be compared to that of Carsten Höller and Pascal Dombis, both of whom have explored similar themes. Suh's work can currently be seen in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Suh currently lives and works in New York, but he frequently travels back to Seoul, Korea, where his family still resides.
Suh is interested in the malleability of space in both its physical and metaphorical forms and examines how the body relates to, inhabits, and interacts with that space. He is particularly interested in domestic space and the way the concept of home can be articulated through architecture that has a specific location, form, and history. For Suh, the spaces we inhabit also contain psychological energy, and in his work, he makes visible those markers of memories, personal experiences, and a sense of security, regardless of geographic location.
Quotations: "The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one but an intangible, metaphorical, and psychological one.”
