It's about a Korean-American experience, not a collision of cultures
"Fallen Star 1/5," Do Ho Suh's huge sculptural work in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's upcoming exhibition of contemporary Korean art, arrived at the museum in five giant crates. When Culture Monster caught up with the artist, he and his assistants were finalizing the installation of an ambitious project likely to be interpreted as a culture clash.
For "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea," opening Sunday at LACMA, Suh has constructed a collision of a traditional Korean house and a 19th-century American mansion, at 1/5 scale. The small Korean building, patterned after the house in Seoul where he grew up, has smashed into a replica of the mansion-turned-apartment house where he lived in the early 1990s while studying art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. The impact has split the larger building in half, exposing apartments jampacked with miniature furnishings and tenants' belongings.
"The common misunderstanding," says Suh, an internationally recognized sculptor who represented his country at the 2001 Venice Biennale, "is that my work is a confrontation, a clash of cultures. It's not really about that." "Fallen Star 1/5" is "a sort of self-portrait" drawn from "a personal journey," he says. And it comes with fairy tale dreamed up by the artist.
Read about Suh and his work in Wednesday's Calendar section or click here. On Thursday, the artist will take part in a public conversation with curator Lynn Zelevansky.
Click on the jump to see more images of "Fallen Star 1/5"
--Suzanne Muchnic
Photo: Do Ho Suh and his work "Fallen Star 1/5" in the process of installation. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times.
Related coverage: 'Your Bright Future' Spotlights Korean Art at LACMA
I'm so excited about this exhibition and can't wait to go this Sunday. Thanks for this post!
Posted by: Janet Kim | June 24, 2009 at 12:03 AM
Um, you do know these are toys, right?. But then, in the "arts", whats so unusual about that? When will they put aside childish things?, Poor Obama. His followers just dont get it. Hard to get anything doen with overgrown pre adolescents brownosing all the time. Gotta work with the adults to get stuff done. And so, he ignores the left. Thank God.
art collegia delenda est
Posted by: Donald Frazell | June 25, 2009 at 01:27 PM