So much of what I do engages with the question of what the notion of ‘home’ means – where it’s located. My fabric sculptures are survival mechanisms because they can be packed into suitcases and carried with you.
—Do Ho Suh
Lehmann Maupin inaugurates its latest location in Palm Beach with a selection of new fabric works by acclaimed Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh, which continue his exploration of the often precarious idea of home in a global society. This presentation marks the artist's first in Palm Beach.
Born in Seoul and currently based in London, Suh is known for his multidisciplinary practice that confronts questions of home, memory, marginality, and the correlation between psychic and physical space. His autobiographical fabric sculptures recreate, to scale, spaces of his former residences and studios. Reflecting an itinerant life, these highly detailed portraits mirror buildings, rooms, and domestic objects from past and present homes in Korea, Rhode Island, Berlin, London, and New York.
Made of polyester fabric, Suh's Specimens are one to one replicas of the accoutrements of domestic life, from doorknobs, to light switches, to bath fittings—all taken from the artist's past and present living spaces and studios. These works feature exquisitely sewn fabric versions of household objects that are found consistently, but with subtle variations from country to country, in homes across the world. Each Specimen is meticulously measured and modelled by Suh, and the transparency of their fabric invites reflection on the notion of home and psychic space. As the artist explains with regards to our post-COVID reality, “our relationship with quotidian objects within the home–the handles, switches and sockets that punctuate the anatomy of our buildings and that we touch all the time–has become fraught, but we’ve also become intensely familiarised with those forms and spaces.” Distilling the feeling and memory of a place, Suh’s Specimen forms are simulacra of the objects that punctuate our everyday lives.
In addition to Lehmann Maupin’s presentation in Palm Beach, Suh’s work is also the subject of a solo exhibition at the Bloomberg SPACE, London, and is included in Break the Mold: New Takes on Traditional Art Making at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; The Contemporary Print: 20 Years at Highpoint Editions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and Colección Jumex: Ambient Temperature at Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
About the Artist
Suh received a B.F.A. in painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Yale University in 1997. Solo exhibitions of his work have recently been organized at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA (2019); Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom (2019); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2019); ARoS, Aarhus, Denmark (2018); Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN (2018); Towada Art Center, Towada, Japan (2018); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (2018); Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA (2018); Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden (2017); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI (2017); NC-arte, Bogotá, Colombia (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA (2016); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2016); Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH (2015); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2015); Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom (2015); The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX (2014); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (2013); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012-2013); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2012); Stuart Collection, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA (2012); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2012); and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2011). Select group exhibitions featuring his work include, When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art, Iris and Gerald B. Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2021); Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA (2019); Waking Dream, Ruby City, San Antonio, TX (2019); Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (2019); Altering Home, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art & Culture City of East Asia, Kanazawa, Japan (2018); Shelter in the Storm, A Look at the Exile in the MUSAC Collection, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, León, Spain (2018); Freespace, Japan Pavilion, 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, Italy (2018); Art of the Senses, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2017); No Place Like Home, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2017); Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, traveled to the Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2015); Beyond and Between, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2014); Shades of Time: An Exhibition from the Archive of Korean American Artists, Part Two 1989 - 2001, Queens Museum, New York, NY (2014); Homebodies, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2013); Dislocation, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, South Korea (2012); and Peppermint Candy: Contemporary Korean Art, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, South Korea (2009). Suh has participated in multiple biennial exhibitions, including the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019); Singapore Biennial (2016); the 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012); the 6th Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom (2010); the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, Italy (2010); the 8th International Istanbul Biennial (2003); the 13th Biennial of Sydney (2002); and represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001).
His work is in numerous international public and private collections, including 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Bard College Museum, Annandale-on Hudson, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Daegu Museum of Art, Daegu, South Korea; Garage CCC, Moscow, Russia; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Gwangju, Korea; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Tate, London, United Kingdom; Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.