Cause & Effect was installed in its current form in  Academic West at Western Washington University in 2012. The sculpture is almost two stories tall and made up of acrylic men stacked on top of each other and held together with cables. Like many of Do Ho Suh’s pieces, Cause & Effect is site specific, using the openness of the floor plan and the natural lighting to accentuate the size and make the figures reflect the sunlight.

Do Ho Suh was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1962, where he later received a Bachelors and Masters in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University. He served mandatory time in the South Korean military and moved to the US to continue perusing his education at RISD and Yale.

Many of his works include small male figurines arranged into larger forms, analyzing the boundaries between the labels of individual and group. Suh likes to challenge the conventional ideas of space and in many pieces he forces the viewer to walk through or on the work itself. He plays a lot with scaling, as well as color and transparency. Many of his larger works are made of semi-transparent fabrics suspended in the air– giving them an almost eerie, ghost-like quality. Suh uses all of these particular techniques in one of his most recent installations, Passage/s. It is a life-sized rendering of some of the places he has lived in his life, focusing on the smaller areas of the apartments, like the hallways and corridors. Most of his pieces are incredibly site specific, while challenging the typical notions of how a piece “should” interact with the space, and with the viewer.

The design of the sculpture can represent several different things. Many of Do Ho Suh’s work shows the coexistence of the individual and the group. Cause & Effect also uses this same idea of the group versus the individual. The sculpture can be viewed two different ways, top to bottom, or bottom to top. Viewing the sculpture from bottom to top it shows a single man slowly growing in number until the ceiling is overwhelmed by tiny men. Because of his time serving in the South Korean Military, Do Ho Suh likes to question the role of the individual in group, and power in numbers. However, if the sculpture is viewed top to bottom, it can be seen to represent the individual coming from the group, or coming from their background. Everyone is a result of their environment and the people around them.

Cause & Effect was initially made in 2007 and later installed in Western Washington University in 2012. 2007 was a big year for pop culture and global politics. The notorious iPhone was released and it was also the year President Bush sent a large number of US troops to Iraq. These world events are reflected in Do Ho Suh’s Cause & Effect as the iPhone made individuals more interconnected, and the Iraq war was a powerful group of individuals joined together to fight a war. The sculpture was described by Suh himself as, “a physical realization of existence, suggesting strength in the presence of numerous individuals.” The sculpture is an attempt to show the duality between individuals and groups and this concept can be seen in his work as well as the time it was built.

At the time of installation on campus in 2012, Bellingham was expanding and taking on a wider community approach. The plans for the Waterfront District were developed and Bellingham International Airport grew. 2012 was a defining year for the US and world; Obama was reelected to serve a second term as President, the Avengers topped box offices, Hurricane Sandy struck Cuba and the US, and the Mayan Calendar ended, creating chaos around the end of the world debate. Although the sculpture was created in 2007, it makes sense that the issues and topics surrounding that year were relevant to the installation in 2012. These major events play a key role in defining the individual within team mentality; from pop culture defining teams in the Avengers- the top earning movie across the globe- to Obama uniting many cultures, races, and classes upon his reelection. The local, national, and global ideologies and events really can be found in Cause & Effect.

Bibliography

“Do Ho Suh.” Art21. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

“Do Ho Suh: Artist Bio.” Lehmann Maupin. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

“Cause & Effect Sculpture on its Way Up at WWU”. Western Today. N.p., 31 May. 2012. Web.

“Cause & Effect”. ArtsWA. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 April. 2017.

“The People History.” Steve Pearson. 2012.

“Looking Back: The top trends in Bellingham’s 2012 business news.” BBJ Today. 2012.

Credit

Description- Olivia Wauzynski, Emma Pyzer, Cassandra Uhlar

Photos- Olivia Wauzynski