Do Ho Suh’s Cause & Effect

Artist Background:

Do-Ho Suh, a nationally recognized installation artist and sculptor, was born in 1962 in Seoul, Korea. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in painting from Seoul National University before moving to America to get his BFA from in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA in sculpture from Yale. He currently works and lives between London, New York and Seoul. In 2013, Do-Ho Suh was named Wall Street Journal Magazine’s Innovator of The Year in Art. Most recently in 2017, Suh was awarded the HoAm Prize in the Arts. The HoAm Prize is Korea’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize in America.

Suh explains Cause and Effect by describing it as a “physical realization of existence, suggesting strength in the presence of numerous individuals. The work is an attempt to decipher the boundaries between a single identity and a larger group, and how the two conditions coexist.” Suh uses this piece to create a dialogue about human relationships and how they relate to placement. Suh’s common themes of individuality and displacement in space that originated from Suh’s move from Korea to America are prevalent in Cause and Effect.

Once he moved from Korea to Rhode Island, his work started to emphasize human displacement. During this period, he claims that he was questioning modernism. Suh focused on traditional style painting in Korea, but eventually viewed it as messy and not concrete enough. He transitioned to sculpting because the process is much more structured than painting, and the organization and cleanliness drew him to the practice.

Time Period:

Cause & Effect was installed at WWU in 2012. The year that Windows 8 launched, Apple and Android had a court trial, the Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars, Obama won his second term election, Memes became an accepted part of culture, and The Verge listed an important new aesthetic: digital and technological. This was the year society began to realize the advancement of technology and its impact on life as we know it. Do Ho Suh’s creation of Cause & Effect drew from complexities within culture. Politically, in South Korea the CEO of Hyundai was president. Business had mixed with politics. Weapons research was booming, as well; South Korea hosted the Nuclear Security Summit and developed ballistic missiles up to 800 km range in agreement with the U.S. The tumultuous time period sheds light on the meaning and medium of Cause & Effect. Do Ho Suh’s piece lends itself to the greater ideology and impact of globalization and ideas about how cultural and human experiences spread.

Artist Statement:

We chose to create a video to explore the details of the sculpture and allow the viewer to dive into the piece. The clips dispersed throughout the video of the sculpture relate to our initial reactions on how the piece looks and the emotions it evokes. Initially we saw Cause & Effect as larger than life, but upon examining it, we found that intricate figures made up the whole.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iuNSa4lJoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KDz6dGQ5RE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owiwCIhc0I0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilalzTsVp_Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-5ffl5_7AI

Music: Epidemic Sound

Home within Home

Video: Jessica Vangel

Artist Background: Lydia Lemon and Kristin Wu

Artist Statement: Lydie Lemon, Kristin Wu, Jessica Vangel