[Gallery Walk] 'If...'... Seodoho's Speculations.zip

Art Sonje Center Seo Do-ho Solo Exhibition
Returns to Same Space After 21 Years Since First Show
30 Years of Work in Video and Installation Compiled
'What Is a Perfect Home, and Where Is It?'

In South Korean society, often called the "Real Estate Republic," a house has become more than just a living space; it has established itself as a symbol of assets and an object of speculation. Like a Monopoly game where players roll dice to buy and sell cities, those who buy homes first in Seoul reap the benefits, while latecomers are pushed to the periphery. The asset gap that begins at that moment snowballs, creating real estate polarization, and soon a house becomes a tool for economic upward mobility and a symbol of success.

Artist Do Ho Suh.
[Photo courtesy of Art Sonje Center]

Artist Seo Do-ho (62) has long focused on memories of places where he has lived through houses, and how those places are realized through architecture and materials, evoking personal memories, at a time when the world is obsessed with houses as assets. Known as a "house-building artist" for recreating the hanok in Seongbuk-dong where he grew up and the apartment in New York where he studied abroad using fabric, he now unfolds the imaginations in his mind at a solo exhibition at the Art Sonje Center in Jongno-gu, Seoul, for the first time in 21 years. In this futuristic outcome, the representative work of the past?the fabric house?has disappeared.

"I described the process of work unfolding with the chain of 'what if' thoughts as 'speculations.' The fabric house also started from the idea of 'what if I could move the house I live in to another place,' and through 'what if,' I was able to conceive works that are impossible in reality."

Do Ho Suh, The Bridge Project (Selection of 180 Drawings), 2024, Mixed media, each 29.7 x 42 cm. Photo by Art Sonje Center

The exhibition title, "Speculations," meaning conjecture, inference, and contemplation, encompasses the artist's idea conception and creative process beyond the physical constraints of reality. True to its title, the exhibition is filled with hundreds of drawing works created in the same sketchbook since Seo Do-ho’s study period at Yale University in the U.S. in 1991, along with architectural models and videos. Kim Sun-jung, artistic director of Art Sonje Center, described it as "an exhibition that feels like downloading Seo Do-ho’s brain."

The exhibition begins on the first floor, "The Ground," showing drawings and videos of a bridge project embodying the dream of building bridges over the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Previously, in 2010, Seo Do-ho attempted to build a perfect house in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, halfway between New York and Seoul, through the "Perfect House: Bridge Project." This time, to build a house somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, the midpoint among three cities including his current residence, London, he collaborated with physicists and architects to imagine a house capable of withstanding tides and winds. The result of "Bridge Project 2" is realized through hundreds of drawings and videos.

At The Ground, Seo Do-ho conveys his thoughts on houses and living spaces to the audience. A bright red life jacket standing tall in the center of the exhibition space represents a minimal survival space that can keep a person alive for a week in the extreme conditions of the Arctic Ocean. Regarding this work titled "Perfect House S.O.S. (Smallest Occupiable Shelter)," the artist explained, "I proposed this life jacket as the smallest shelter and the smallest form of a house that a person can enter."

Secret Garden, 2012, Mixed media, display case with LED lighting, 199 x 180 x 82cm
Photo by Art Sonje Center

On the second floor, Space 1 offers a glimpse into the artist’s thinking through the Speculations series, treating houses not as fixed residences but as mobile media. The hanok in Seongbuk-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, where Seo Do-ho was born and raised, appears on a bridge in London and crash-lands atop the San Diego Museum of Art in the U.S. In the work "Secret Garden," the artist’s old house is loaded onto a 16-ton large trailer truck crossing the American continent. The work "Shooting Star," precariously installed on the rooftop of the Jacobs Hall building on the 7th floor of the University of California, San Diego campus in 2012, is also reproduced at a 1:32 scale. Starting from the imagination that a typical American middle-class house with a garden was swept up by a tornado and crash-landed on the Jacobs Hall rooftop, this work well illustrates the "Speculations" concept Seo previously mentioned.

The artwork "Perfect House S.O.S." is exhibited at the solo exhibition "Speculations" by artist Seo Do-ho, held at the Art Sonje Center in Jongno-gu, Seoul. The exhibition runs until November 3. [Image source=Yonhap News]

The "House that Builds Bridges," installed between two buildings in Liverpool at the 2010 Liverpool Biennale, where the artist inserted the house he lived in, is recreated as a model and presented in this exhibition. Also, the artist’s empty statue pedestal installation "Gongin," which attracted attention when installed in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C. this April, is displayed at a 1:6 scale. Notably, the public sculptures at Art Sonje are equipped with motors, allowing visitors to see them move the pedestal in unison.

On the third floor, Space 2 screens videos of two communal housing complexes in Korea and the UK. Documenting the demolition processes of Daegu’s "Dongin Apartment" (2022) and London’s housing complex "Robin Hood Gardens" (2018), Seo captures the lives of residents, the history of the community, the movement of houses, and the passage of time on a single screen with a cold and calm approach, as if making a rubbing to preserve the space exactly. This video, which condenses the artist’s profound interest in memories of houses and spaces, invites sociological reflection on the conflicting time and space and the meaning of houses within them.

Artist Do Ho Suh is answering questions from the press at the press conference for his solo exhibition "Speculations" held at the Art Sonje Center in Jongno-gu, Seoul. The exhibition runs until November 3. [Image source=Yonhap News]

Although the exhibition presents a vast and diverse array of works, reflecting the artist’s confession that "I am always working on multiple projects simultaneously in the studio," Seo Do-ho’s breakthrough work, the "fabric hanok," cannot be found anywhere in the exhibition space. He says, "The fabric hanok developed from the idea of 'what if I could move the house I live in to another place,' and it is just the 'tip of the iceberg' among many works." He adds, "In fact, my mind is filled with countless projects." Seo’s speculations, like his thoughts on space represented by houses and his countless ideas, continue to evolve and remain a work in progress. The exhibition runs until November 3 this year.