Since his New York debut in 1997, Do Ho Suh (born 1962 in Seoul, Korea; lives and works in New York) has become renowned for his use of unconventional materials, such as military dog tags and silk, and intricately designed sculptures that surpass regular notions of scale and site-specificity. Suh’s resulting large, fantastic re-creations of personally meaningful architectural structures or armies of miniature figures that form architecture-like structures create new contexts in which to view timeless truths. Nothing exists outside of the context, whether it is spatial, social, psychological, or cultural. In his series Seoul Home, Paratrooper, Speculation, and Cause & Effect, Suh leads the viewer through the many contexts he has personally experienced. The artist even allows the viewer to walk on and interact with some of his pieces, such as Some / One (2001), where the viewer is invited to walk on a sea of polished military dog tags covering the floor, which rises in the center to form a hollow suit of armor. A small mirror inside transforms the viewer into yet another chain link in the collective armor. Most of his works show Suh fascinated by the idea of inyeon, or karmic fate.
