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Do Ho Suh

Venice Biennale

Venice

Aug 29–Nov 21, 2010

Installation view of Blueprint at 12th International Architecture Exhibition of Venice Biennale

Venice

Do Ho Suh and Suh Architects are pleased to announce their joint collaboration 'Blueprint' in the 12th International Architecture Exhibition for the Venice Biennale. Invited by Kazuyo Sejima to participate in the main exhibition for the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale "Blueprint' will be exhibited in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni della Biennale. 'Blueprint' is a dialogue between an artist's home, twice-removed, and its past, present, and future silhouette. This dialogue began with two brothers, Do Ho and Eulho Suh (Suh Architects), exploring their notions of home. Beginning with artist Do Ho Suh's current New York address, the collaboration with Suh Architects re-envisions the Hanok in which they grew up together as it arrives in Venice, Italy.

Do Ho Suh's work is a full-scale (1:1 scale) 12.7 meter tall, hand-stitched, translucent fabric facade of the New York townhouse where he presently resides. As part of a series of works recreating the buildings in which he has lived, the artist continues to explore the notion of home in a nomadic, global society. If suspended vertically, the viewer is invited to enter this dream-like drapery building through an entry on the ground floor. Beyond the entry, the viewer then finds himself standing on what appears to be the building's shadow. If suspended horizontally, the townhouse hovers above the viewer, an ephemeral blueprint floating in from New York.

Portrait of Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, Seoul, Korea; lives and works in London, United Kingdom) works across various media, creating drawings, film, and sculptural works that confront questions of home, physical space, displacement, memory, individuality, and collectivity. Suh is best known for his fabric sculptures that reconstruct to scale his past and present homes and studios in Korea, Rhode Island, Berlin, London, and New York.

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.

12th International Architecture Exhibition: Blueprint | Lehmann Maupin