Lehmann Maupin is pleased to a present Passage/s, an exhibition of new work by Do Ho Suh. The internationally renowned South Korean artist is best known for his installations, drawings, sculptures, and films, which often reflect on themes of home, displacement, memory, and individuality that evolve from his personal experiences and family history. For this Hong Kong exhibition, Suh will premiere a three-channel video installation, Passage/s: The Pram Project, as well as new drawings.
Passage/s: The Pram Project captures the artist and his young daughters on outings together in their London neighborhood. Shot using GoPro cameras affixed to the sides and top of a pram, the video offers the children’s perspective of the city. The ambient noises of the street and the rattling of the pram punctuate the conversations and chatter between Suh and his daughters. The children’s excitement imbues the dreary London cityscape with a curiosity and wonder shared by Suh, whose worldview had also been recently changed by fatherhood. Suh utilizes film editing—shifting between English and Korean and splicing in imagery from Suh’s hometown of Seoul—to comment on his experience of crossing cultural and geographical boundaries, and to express the transient nature of the Suh family’s life. Each of the three channels depicts a different viewpoint from the pram, projected simultaneously, for an immersive perspective and intimate experience of this work, emulative of the artist’s own relationship with his daughters.
Suh has spent his career traveling between his homes and studios in New York, Seoul, and London, and frequently uses this experience as a way to fully explore and visually interpret the multiplicity of the immigrant experience. Suh has found a way to feel at home in distinctly diverse cities, thus creating a complex understanding of self, identity, and place. This notion of place can be understood both as a geographic location, and the degree of familiarity that we attribute to it, as well as the emotional connections to specific buildings, environments, and scenery that conjure feelings of nostalgia or belonging. For Suh, the experience of fatherhood has offered an opportunity for deeper reflection as he incorporates his children into his work, drawing his audience to consider how cycles of life contribute to one’s sense of place and purpose.
In addition to this exhibition, Suh’s work is included in the 2016 Singapore Biennale, An Atlas of Mirrors, through February 26, 2017. His traveling exhibition in the United States will be on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI, through May 14, 2017. This spring, Suh will also reveal his project for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Lehmann Maupin (press release)
