Do Ho Suh’s Altermodernity

Artist, Do Ho Suh explores the relationship between the individual  and shared space. In particular, Suh’s sculptures question the notions of   transnationalism as he may have experienced them himself. Born in Korea and having come to the United States in the early ‘90’s, Suh has  pursued studies at Seoul National University, The Rhode Island School of  Design and Yale University. Suh’s highly personal work thus relies on  process, the transparent, and transitional spaces.

In “My Thirty-Nine  Years”, a collection of eleven uniforms worn  throughout his life, the  transitions Suh has made becomes evocative of a  passageway. It is as Suh  describes, a coming out of the body and into the  space. Suh’s negotiation  with space is especially evident in “Seoul  Home/New York Home”,  wherein the artist has re-created his American and Korean homes in  delicate fabrics such silk-organza and polyester, connecting the two with a fictional corridor. For Suh, the corridor becomes the most important part of the piece — a transitional space connecting his lives across geographic boundaries. In their attempt to erase conventional notions of a singular rooted experience, Suh’s works can be related to the ideas of Nicolas Bourriaud, author of Relational Aesthetics and Postproduction (both 2002), and curator of the Fourth Tate Triennial (2009).   In his most recent publication, The Radicant, Bourriaud addresses postmodernism as merely another system of representation (which ultimately offers little to voice the plurality of global culture).

Similarly, while modernism is arguably faulted at fundamental levels, its persistence, Bourriaud says, deserves some reconsideration. In coining the “altermodern” to save us from the chaos of postmodernism, Bourriaud thus focuses on engendering a new kind of modernity, shaped by the present and constant flow of pluralities. Suh’s work brings us that much closer to this envisaged modernity, because rather than flattening cultural differences he values his diversity among an increasingly standardized world. As such, Do Ho Suh exemplifies Bourriaud’s radicant; leaving his single root in Korea to advance his identity on multiple surfaces and spaces.

 

 

 

Do Ho Suh’s work can be viewed at his representative  gallery http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/#/artists/do-ho-suh/.

-Shea Goli