week 3

Finally back in class!!! What is better – the soddy lab changed and it is so cosy now! I love it

This week we were again responding to the works Miranda showed us and later we did further research about one artist of our choice.

“In exquisitely made works, Do Ho Suh explores contemporary arrangements of space and the unstable boundaries of its categorisation along lines of individuality and collectivity, physicality and immateriality, mobility and fixity. Influenced by his peripatetic existence – leaving his native South Korea to study and live in the United States, he has more recently moved between New York, Seoul and London – an enduring theme of the artist’s practice is the connection between the individual and the group across global cultures. The multiplicity of individuality is tested through meditative processes of repetition: whether interlinked along a lattice of fishing nets, amassed into monumental tornado-like forms, absent from ranks of empty uniforms, or present in every yearbook photo taken at the artist’s high school over 60 years, the artist uses the reproduced human figure to explore sensitively, and with spectacular formal effect, the ways in which personal space inherently extends into the collective sphere.

It is with the same elegant economy of conceptual means, focusing on simple yet transformative acts of repetition, that Suh treats the complex psychological and physical architectural structures of the concept of ‘home’. In work for which he is widely known, the artist meticulously constructs proportionally exact replicas of dwelling places, architectural features, or household appliances – kitchen sinks, toilets and microwaves – from stitched planes of translucent, coloured polyester fabric. Often reflections of places the artist has inhabited, such as his childhood home or Western apartments, these delicately precise, weightless impressions seem to exist between imagination and reality. Suh has spoken of the distinctive openness to the environment of Korean homes; more than repositories of personal memory or nostalgic projections, his works respond to the indistinct boundaries between psychic interior and objective exterior, which make of home an ongoing lived function rather than a physical structure.

Constructed much like items of clothing, Suh’s portable modules of space were designed to be packed in his suitcase as he travelled between continents, the artist’s own personal peripatetic history bleeding into the universalised nomadism of a globalised world. Transitory, connecting spaces – corridors, staircases, bridges, gateways – feature often in the artist’s drawings and sculptural installations: rather than borders, Suh is fascinated with the linking spaces through which the body travels between cultures. In this international era, the house is a protective mantle transformed by its arrivals in different contexts: in different works, homes from different stages of the artist’s life nest one inside the other in differently coloured swathes of fabric, or come dramatically into collision in painstakingly constructed models.” https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/188-do-ho-suh/

As I mentioned in the class this work caught my attention because of its dollhouse-like look. I was a kid who played a lot with different kinds of dolls: Barbie, Bratz, Polly Pocket. I was an EXPERT haha. So when I first saw Do Ho Suh’s projects the first thing that came to my mind was: dollhouse, I would like to play with. As you probably noticed I am a very sentimental person, so if something reminds me of my childhood or home it quickly steals my heart.

Also, I watched a movie that Miranda recommended to me which is The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Electrical-Life-Louis-Wain/dp/B09QFMTWYM – you can watch it on Amazon Prime

“The true story of eccentric British artist Louis Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose playful, psychedelic pictures transformed the public’s perception of cats forever. Set in the early 1900s, we follow Wain as he seeks to unlock the “electrical” mysteries of the world and, in so doing, to better understand his own life and the profound love he shared with his wife Emily Richardson (Claire Foy).” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10687506/

I am not going to lie when I watched this movie I cried a lot. I am not saying that it is an uncommon thing for me, because I cried even on Shrek, but still, it evoked many emotions in me. I surely can recommend this movie for everyone and I am so grateful that Miranda told me about this.

The last thing I would like to share is pictures of Instagram artists who I found recently.