Skip to content

Do Ho Suh

Hong Kong

Nov 14, 2013–Jan 25, 2014

Installation view of Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong

12 Pedder Street

Central, Hong Kong

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Hong Kong of acclaimed Korean artist Do Ho Suh, who is best known for his fabric sculptures that recreate the spaces of his homes and the domestic objects found within. The exhibition will be on view from 14 November 2013 to 25 January 2014 at 407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong and coincides with the opening of Suh’s installation Home within Home within Home within Home within Home at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in his native Seoul. Lehmann Maupin Gallery has represented Do Ho Suh worldwide since the beginning of his career and gave the artist his first gallery show in 2000.

For the exhibition, Suh explores the idea of home and memories of personal space by reproducing, in actual scale, objects from his former New York City apartment. Whether it is a light switch, doorknob, refrigerator, or bathtub, Suh believes an individual’s particular memory of space can be captured by these everyday objects, and that the physical contact and mental memory of an item’s place and form within the home creates a familiarity within one’s spatial dynamic. Similarly, these objects are a way for Suh to remember the New York City apartment he occupied from 1997 to 2011. The fabric sculptures include a true-to-life radiator from the corridor of his building in red fabric, and a medicine cabinet, bathtub, refrigerator, stove and toilet from the interior of his apartment in blue fabric. Also included in the exhibition are smaller objects from the artist’s former home in Berlin in green fabric in addition to similar items in red and blue from his New York home. This collection of translucent sculptures is a continuation of Suh’s ongoing Specimen Series, which the artist has ambitiously expanded for the Hong Kong exhibition by turning his attention to larger and more complex objects, and presenting them in new and innovative ways that utilize light to highlight their transparency.

Installation view of Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong
Installation Views: 1 of 5
Installation view of Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong
Installation Views: 1 of 4

Books and Editions

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.

Learn about the artist