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SUH Do-Ho
South Korea/United States b.1962
 Installation view Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2002 Queensland Art Gallery Photograph: Matthew Kassay |
Suh Do-Ho is a Korean artist with a rapidly growing international reputation. His ability to express complex ideas with subtle clarity, using simple and beautiful forms, marks him as a significant contemporary artist. Suh Do-Ho left Korea in 1993 to study and live in the United States. The idea of the ‘global village’ is of keen interest to him, and his works often address the complicated issue of cultural difference. Many of his works embody a tension between the American emphasis on the individual and the Korean celebration of collective society.
More information about the artist
 Suh Do-Ho Who am we? (detail) 1996/2002 25 sheets, 4 colour off-set wallpaper 61 x 91.4cm each Collection: The artist Photograph: Matthew Kassay |
Who am we? 1996–2002 is a site-specific work installed as wallpaper wrapped along two walls. A field of miniaturised faces creates the wallpaper’s pattern. The portraits are of about 40 000 teenagers and were taken from photographs in the artist’s high-school yearbooks. At a distance, the faces cannot be distinguished and the work resembles two blank walls. On closer viewing, dots become visible and, finally, become recognisable as photographs. This negotiation between the states of anonymity and individual identity is one that takes place gradually and depends on the viewer’s interaction with the work:
‘I reduced the scale of the portraits as far as I could because I wanted to find out the exact point at which both the human eye and technology could identify individual traits. In the title I wanted to underline the distinction between singular and plural. In the Korean language, there is no such distinction.’ (1)
 Suh Do-Ho Blue-green bridge 2000 Acrylic figures, polycarbonate sheets, steel structure 60 x 130 x 1140cm Collection: Artsonje Museum, Kyungju Photographs: Matthew Kassay |
 Suh Do-Ho Blue-green bridge (detail) 2000 Acrylic figures, polycarbonate sheets, steel structure 60 x 130 x 1140cm Collection: Artsonje Museum, Kyungju Photograph: Matthew Kassay |
The repetition of elements is an important factor in much of Suh Do-Ho’s practice. Blue-green bridge 2000 depends on the massing together of thousands of cast resin figures, which create the structure of a gently sloping bridge or walkway. Bridges are symbols of connection and interdependence, and this work continues Suh Do-Ho’s investigation of the relationships between the individual and the collective, and between his familial home in South Korea and his adopted home in the United States. The tiny figures gain strength and power through their sheer number, giving the impression that they could support the weight of an individual that may cross the bridge. However, this is misleading as Blue-green bridge is not intended to be walked across. Like Who am we? 1996–2000, Blue-green bridge plays with the viewer’s sense of perception. While it is easy to see that one end of the bridge is blue and the other is green, it is harder to determine exactly where the transition from one to the other takes place.
1. Suh Do-Ho interviewed by Priya Malhotra, ‘Space is metaphor for history’, Tema Celeste, no. 83, January–February 2001, p.53.
This artist is featured in the Education Resource Kit.
List of works in APT 2002
Artists and Works
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