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.

Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, Seoul, Korea) currently lives and works in London, New York, and Seoul. Suh originally studied oriental painting in Seoul National University before moving to the United States in his late 20s to study painting and sculpture in Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University. Since the mid-1990s, Suh has questioned the conventional notion of personal space and explored the variable dimension and mobility of this idea in both its physical and metaphorical manifestations. Suh’s full-scale “homes” of semitransparent cloth, including the traditional Korean house (hanok) of his childhood and his apartment in New York, explore basic human values and overarching themes of home, family, tradition and origination. Through these works he examines the place where one spends life’s moments and how that space consequently nurtures one’s identity. By recreating personal structures into something easily movable and detachable, Suh questions the boundaries between public and private space, between a faraway birthplace and a current abode, and between the land of memories and actual places.

Do Ho Suh was named WSJ. Magazine's 2013 Innovator of the Year in Art. His recent solo exhibitions and projects include Home within Home within Home within Home within Home, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2013); Do Ho Suh: Perfect Home, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012-2013); In Between, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2012); Fallen Star, Stuart Collection, University of San Diego, California (2012); and Home within Home, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2012).

The artist’s work is included in numerous museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; Leeum, Seoul; Artsonje Center, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, among many others.

Lehmann Maupin Gallery
407 Pedder Building
12 Pedder Street
Central, Hong Kong
Tel. +852 25300025
hongkong@lehmannmaupin.com
www.lehmannmaupin.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Friday from 10am to 7pm
Saturday from 11am to 7pm

Related images

  1. Specimen Series: 348 West 22nd Street, APT. New York, NY 10011, USA - Stove, 2013, polyester fabric, 41.8 x 20.5 x 25.7 inches, 106.2 x 52.1 x 65.3 cm
  2. Specimen Series: 348 West 22nd Street, APT. New York, NY 10011, USA - Radiator, 2013, polyester fabric, 36.8 x 29.4 x 7.2 inches, 93.5 x 74.7 x 18.3 cm
  3. Specimen Series: 348 West 22nd Street, APT. New York, NY 10011, USA - Refrigerator, 2013, polyester fabric, 65.7 x 28.6 x 29.1 inches, 166.9 x 72.6 x 73.9 cm