Do Ho Suh (By Heidi)

Do Ho Suh was born in Seoul, Korea in 1962. Before serving in the South Korean military he earned his BFA and MFA in oriental painting at the Seoul National University. After his enrollment in the army he traveled to the United States and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Yale University. Suh focuses his sculptural pieces on how viewers occupy and inhabit public space. His intricate sculptures defy conventional notion of scale and site-specificity. In many of Suh's floor sculptures viewers are encouraged to walk on glass pieces primarily held up by many tiny human like figures. These pieces signify the fact that many people make up a society and those people are what keep the society going or to Suh what holds a society up. In another piece Suh covers a gallery space floor with thousands of dog tags all leading to a hollow ghost like suit of honor also made from dog tags. Suh could be arguing the fine line between personal space and public space or he might be arguing strength in numbers verse homogeneity. Suh's sculptures question the identity of the individual in today's fast paced global society. A retrospective of Suh's work was presented at the Seattle Art Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum in 2002. Suh's work has also been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in 2001, Serpentine Museum in London in 2002 and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO in 2002-2003.