South Korean artist Do Ho Suh is internationally recognized for his ghostly, diaphanous structure and fabric-made objects, which create imaginary areas which are bodily current but inconceivable to inhabit. His large-scale, immersive, however impermanent installations function “acts of memorialization,” exploring themes of identification, house, and the strain between private and public house. These concepts are confronted inside the framework of displacement and cultural transition, reflecting the worldwide mobility of up to date life.
For this version of Frieze Seoul, Suh has been invited to collaborate with the truthful’s primary sponsor, LG, on a venture exploring the intergenerational legacies of Korean artwork whereas spotlighting the nation’s drive for technological innovation. He has been working along with his brother, famend architect Eul Ho Suh, on the digital canvas of LG OLED T, paying homage to their father, Suh Se Okay—an important determine in Korean ink abstraction, a radical style that opened creative prospects for a whole era.
Observer spoke with the brothers in the course of the unveiling of “Suh Se Okay X LG OLED: Reimagined by Suh Do Ho” at Frieze Seoul, discussing how the venture traces a line between generations of Korean artwork and its potential future improvement. The venture is, at first, an homage to their father, who pioneered a distinctively Korean strategy to visible artwork. This intergenerational dialog reveals how Korean artwork and aesthetics have developed over the many years. As Do Hoh Suh informed Observer: “This intensely private venture goals to honor our father’s legacy whereas additionally contemplating the evolution of Korean artwork. We hope this venture will permit for a deeper understanding of our father’s work, highlighting the custom he represents and the very important philosophical ideas he explored all through his life.”
Se Okay’s work embodies a defining second in Korean artwork, linking calligraphy and a selected philosophical strategy associated to the mark-making second and gesture to the interconnection between physique and thoughts. “Motion is an integral component in our father’s portray, the place bodily gestures create ink strokes on the rice paper,” stated the artist, “These marks act as a hint of his motion, a file of efficiency. The concept these marks on the paper carry the artist’s vitality is important in creating his work, which we felt essential to share with a broader viewers.”
The presentation at Frieze deliberately juxtaposes rarely-seen footage of Suh Se Okay in motion alongside his work and Do Ho Suh’s animations on the innovatively clear screens of the LG OLED T, positioned within the house in keeping with how Eul Ho Suh has envisioned and conceived the relation between the marks, the viewers, this new know-how and the expertise of being within the house. “We hope to ask audiences to interact in a dialogue about artwork, custom, and innovation,” Do Ho Suh added.
One spotlight of the set up is Suh Se Okay’s Folks sequence: minimal black marks and indicators absorbed by the paper that evoke human figures whereas remaining exterior and summary, as a synthesis of the very important actions that animate our bodily existence. Eul Ho Suh defined that earlier than their father’s affect, Korean artwork was deeply formed by conventional Chinese language landscapes: “He needed to go lighter, creating summary work with no colours, simply black and white.” When Suh Se Okay began to discover this radical new language within the ’60s, he was instructing at Seoul Nationwide College, and lots of college students started to observe the brand new motion. It wasn’t simply in regards to the high quality of the appliance of ink, nonetheless. He needed to convey his vitality to the works, with marks that would switch thought and gesture, with porous paper as a transmitter.
Nonetheless, what’s most fascinating about this venture is how custom interacts with know-how. In Do Ho Suh’s set up, there’s an identical pressure—the work is very tactile and bodily, but the translucent look makes them look extra like ghosts or digital renderings. “Though my follow is in some ways indebted to the lengthy historical past of conventional Korean craftsmanship, it’s also profoundly contingent upon new know-how,” stated the artist, who makes use of laser scanning, 3D printing, CAD and robotics in his work.
The transparency of the display screen within the Frieze set up completely aligns with Suh Se Okay’s curiosity within the infinite and house, a few of which the brothers have absorbed and adopted of their native practices. Layering permits for an interaction of opacity and transparency, revealing and concealing photographs and picture planes. “The footage of our father making the work is introduced right here, mixed along with his writing and the animations, which additional reenact the method of the work. It is a means to discover these crucial ideas of his work and reveal this intensely personal course of to encourage a better understanding of his concepts.”
Layering additionally serves to underscore the complexity of the work, in keeping with the artist. The layering of the photographs on the screens recollects the melding of ink and paper. “This results in the query: is the portray on or within the paper?” stated Do Ho Suh. “The properties of the rice paper permit for these layers to be separated to create close to copies—one thing that straddles the thought of uniqueness and version—an interrogation of the floor hierarchy.”
“You’ve gotten all of the highly effective vitality inside the motion in an interaction between bidimensional and tridimensional house,” added Eul Ho Suh.
There are the technical components—the layering methods employed and the interaction of sunshine and shadow—and people extra philosophical. Because the brothers famous, the show clarifies the ideas underlying a lot of Japanese portray, enhanced by new know-how. It additionally delves into the idea of transparency (a crucial element in Do Ho Suh’s work) as a type of absence or vacancy, a theme central to Suh Se Okay’s work and uniquely interpreted by the 2 brothers. This concept echoes Buddhist teachings, the place vacancy (śūnyatā in Sanskrit) reveals the true nature of issues: they lack intrinsic existence, are impermanent, and always altering, reliant on varied causes and situations. The areas between, although usually unseen, acquire significance by way of exploration.
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When requested how the strategy and sensibility of Korean artists have remodeled over time and the way this pertains to the fast societal modifications in South Korea, Do Ho Suh stated these transformations are a mirrored image of societal change. “From my father’s time to mine, Korean artists have progressively embraced a extra international perspective whereas sustaining a profound connection to our cultural roots,” he defined. “My time within the U.S. to review within the ’90s proved a necessary shift in my appreciation of the variations between Japanese and Western views and exploring the de-mystification of portray—this private historical past and my Korean background have been important themes in my work.”
Finally, the venture is a robust assertion on the evolution of creative approaches and languages in South Korea, from the novel innovation explored by Suh Se Okay to the alternatives supplied by the digital house and new applied sciences. On this sense, the set up’s screens each memorialize the previous and function a portal to Korea’s future.
Reminiscence is, in reality, on the coronary heart of this venture, as Do Ho Suh suggests. Whereas artwork can doc, assist visualize and assist think about, this specific set up explores how artwork can even change into a instrument for oral and cultural reminiscence. The artist calls the interaction of collective and private reminiscence in his work important, however there are caveats to that assertion. “Exploring reminiscence, each its fallibility and pervasiveness stays intriguing to me, however not in a nostalgic sense,” he stated. “Reminiscence not solely helps doc our previous but in addition helps visualize our ideas for the long run. Our father’s work additionally act as recollections of his actions, snapshots of his motion by way of time.”
To Do Ho Suh, artwork is a vessel for recollections. “Our distinctive and privileged perception into our father’s work and the method of its making has led us to this venture—it may very well be seen as an try and create a tangible manifestation of our intangible recollections, a chance to revisit them and share them.”
“Suh Se Okay X LG OLED: Reimagined by Suh Do Ho” is on view at Frieze Seoul from September 4 to September 8.
