Do-Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin - Brief Article

Do-Ho Suh plays upon the resonant image of the individual's place in the vastness of the earth, recalling the visual journey from minute to macroscopic devised decades ago by the agency of Charles and Ray Eames for their film and photo cast "Powers of Ten." Similarly bear uponed with the interrelationship of ideas and things, and understanding that scale is a way of organizing information, Suh considers cultural and sociological issues, press outed in this project as the force of the collective made powerful by means of the subjugation of the individual.

At first reading, the installation Floor (1997-2000) consisted of a not-quite-uniform paving of thick glass plates raised a small in number inches above the gallery floor and place into a larger raised area made of forest that resembled the original floor. A hardly any of the 40 glass sheets, each a meter square, were wound away in arcs at intersecting corners, the empty with a scoops introduced to the minimalist grid where the contiguity of plates was interrupted by means of the vertical elements of an existing; structural round pillar and two functional pipes, Formally, Suh looked to offer a simple sculptural program that involved the adjustment of the work to its site. upon closer examination, however, it became apparent that the transparent floor was supported from below upon the palms of seemingly innumerable tiny hands, raised upward by the agency of more than 180,000 small PVC figures that stood upon the floor. The figures, just above 2 inches high and cast from six-different mold were differentiated through reductive characteristics of gender and race, their leg bowed with the effort of supporting the plates raised above their heads, like Lilliputian titans drawn from the myths of politics and creation to support the each.

In Doormat: Welcome (Green) 2000 Suh massed similar figures in glowing pink and virid polyurethane as a doormat spelling on the outside the invitation of its title, as admitting the duty of the individual in a agriculture based on social regimentation begins with happy homemaking. He overspreaded the wall separating gallery from office with Who Am We? (2000) sheets of wallpaper figured with minute cameo portraits of young men and women which become indistinct a pace away and, at another, dissolve completely Suh casts that such manipulations of scale can constitute a philosophical discourse, literally and figuratively engaged with the meaning and power implicit in focus and perspective.

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