Review: Do Ho Suh | Tracing Time – Modern One

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Recently opened, the Tracing Time exhibition at Modern One by London-based Do Ho Suh (born 1962, Seoul), is an absolute treat. Thought-provoking, enchanting, technically bewildering, and a whole lot of fun, this is art to make you go ‘ahhhhh?!’ Oh, and entrance is free!

Let me preface any further remarks by saying that whilst I am an art enthusiast, I am by no means an expert. However, society has wandered into an age where exhibitions enjoy plentiful listings in the ‘to-do’ pages of newspapers, magazines and websites, but sparse review or evaluation thereafter. Unto the breach then, dear friends, stiffen the sinews…

There’s a deeply personal warmth threaded (quite literally) through Do Ho Suh’s work. The concept of ‘home’ is the flame around which the artist seems to flutter, down to every fitting, every texture. Meditations on staircases abound and the visitor’s first encounter with the towering Staircase/s, 2019 cannot fail to impress.

What first appears to be a sweeping rainbow work in pencil reveals itself to be so many threads carefully, and swiftly embedded in handmade cotton paper. The result is immensely energetic, a tremendous celebration of the stairways which so many of us take in our strides every day.

Moving from such elevating meditations to impossible architectures, there’s My Homes – 3, 2012, a 2D drawing of each of the artist’s prior homes connected end on end. The scale of the drawing is so very clever, the miniature yet accurate technical strokes drawing the gaze in to follow each pathway and trace every transition from start to end. There’s a real sense of journey through time and space, a very personal story thread from then to now, there to here.

However, no Doh Ho Suh exhibition would be complete (I now know, thanks to this exhibition and further reading) without at least one diaphanous reconstruction of one of the artist’s past homes in multi-coloured polyester. The first encounter with Hub, 3rd Floor, Union Wharf, 23 Wenlock Road, London N1 7ST, UK, 2016 is arresting and tremendous fun. Accurate to the millimetre, and complete with service pipes, fire alarms, safety glass, and even hints of the original wall textures, it’s a remarkable undertaking. Passing through it summons shades of 90s dreams of virtual reality, details continually cathing the eye, even whilst the spirit is buoyed by the colourful shading.

Tracing Time has many more surprises in home recreation to offer, but these deserve to be discovered rather than foretold! Pay particular attention to the various robotic dreams of houses and more speckled throughout the galleries. Do Ho Suh is an artist more than ready to embrace the 21st-century.

“Do Ho Suh is an artist more than ready to embrace the 21st-century.”

However, Do Ho Suh’s contemplations extend beyond the home (though rarely leaving the idea entirely behind) and into other aspects of society.

There’s the model for Suh’s (I think) only permanent piece of public art Public Figures, 1998. The massive stone plinth carried by hundreds of miniature labourers seems simultaneously radical, message-laden and good-humoured. The pedestal seems a crushing, rather than elevating force, enforcing class structures, even while the labourers have the power to move, or even dispose of the monument. This is work to make you think on a subject, rather than a puzzle to be teased apart. It’s accessible, elegantly simple, and deeply meaningful.

Work such as ScaledBehaviour (HomeWithinHome), 2023 where Suh’s intent to encase one former home within another is left to sophisticated drawing software to, within limits, extemporise on. Does the ‘spirit’ of one home follow the occupant to the next, and the one after?…it seems to ask.

Another view of an individual’s journey can be found in the sweep of one of Suh’s Karma Juggler series, whilst stability and wholesomeness abound in the simple joys of Family Cuddle, 2022, the push-pull power of social movements thrums through sketches echoing his monumental Paratrooper, 2003 at the New York Lehmann Maupin, and there’s even a healthy dose of fart-based humour. You read that correctly, fart – forgive me, I was distracted from recording the name of the piece by chuckling.

Impressive, delightful, and a little magical, Tracing Time at Modern One is an exhibition not to be missed by either Edinburgh residents or visitors. There’s far more to enjoy than I could possibly list, including a superbly kitted-out Do Ho Suh-themed activity studio for kids (of all sizes one presumes). Entrance is free, so what are you waiting for?

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Do Ho Suh | Tracing Time will remain at Modern One until September 2024. For more information, click here.

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