Tracing space: Do Ho Suh at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
By Charlotte Jansen
Bill Clinton was one of the first people to visit Do Ho Suh’s latest exhibition – a major survey presenting the Korean-American artist’s acclaimed work that opened at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati this weekend. The former US president paused for a photo op in front of the exhibition – entitled 'Passage' – before continuing his tour of the Queen City.
It’s as good a promotional picture as you could hope to get ahead of an opening; and in itself created an interesting dialogue with the artist’s oeuvre and his studies of the mutable and phantasmagorical qualities of space. They are imaginings of the absent things that have passed through and yet somehow leave a trace, as well as of the possibilities of other elements to surprise and transform.
Do Ho Suh is best known for his ruminations on the idea of home, informed by the artist’s own migrations and the places he has lived in (South Korea, Europe and the US). This survey, however, is rooted specifically in the CAC’s Zaha Hadid-designed building and the ways in which 'the structure could be navigated as a single, porous passage'.
