Architect Suh Eul Ho redefines cultural identity through innovative materials and technology. His work emphasizes harmony with nature and community engagement. Suh graduated with a bachelor's in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master's from Harvard University. Since founding Suh Architects in 2006, he has won the Red Dot Design Award (2015, 2022) and the iF Design Award (2023).
INTERVIEW with Suh Eulho
Q. As you and your brother collaborate on an exhibition based on the works of your father, artist Suh Seok, what does this project mean to you?
I have collaborated with my brother Do Ho on various projects including the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2010), and the Gwangju Biennale (2012), in the professional context of installation artist and architect. Based on our mutual trust and the conversations accumulated through our collaborations, we share a very special creative process that surpasses general collaborative relations. This project was especially meaningful because it was an opportunity for two sons to reimagine their father’s artworks. Because we have lived and breathed our father’s art, we were able to understand what we must and must not do just by looking into each other’s eyes.
Q. What were the roles you focused on in preparing for the project, as architect Suh Eulho and as artist Suh Doho?
Do Ho and I do not just share an artistic connection. We have similar standards and ideas about the fundamentals. Daily conversations enable us to work together without conflict, while respecting fundamental values even in creative projects. Based on a clear understanding of Do Ho’s video exhibition concept, I did my best to design a space signifying the reimagination of a father’s work by his children.
Q. What kind of inspiration did the digital canvas called LG OLED open up for you?
The transparent OLED TV by LG Electronics is a new digital product that supports both “transparent mode” without a backlight, and “black screen mode.” This enables viewers to experience both a world that unfolds behind the transparent screen, and another world that emerges as the black screen comes up. Using these three-dimensional characteristics, we wanted to present an overlapping vision, viewing the father’s world of art through his sons’ novel imaginative perspectives. In this sense, I thought it was an excellent new canvas to realize the exhibition.
Q. What unique merit of LG OLED did you discover while installing the videos and embodying the space?
I think it was the room for interpretation that the transparent screen provides. In this project, our goal was to capture the two sons’ imaginations as they looked at their father’s work in a new light. I expect that the video work shown on the transparent OLED TV by LG Electronics will open up space for new imagination and interpretation in the minds of viewers.
Q. Painting, installation and video technology will come together in harmony in the LG OLED Lounge of Frieze Seoul 2024. What is the core architectural point you hope to express in the space containing works of multiple layers?
For this exhibition, I wanted to embody a space where spectators could experience the various layers intuitively. Therefore, I designed the space so that viewers may commune and let their imaginations unfold as they experience the simple beauty of empty space, the energetic gestures of the brush in Suh Se Ok’s paintings, and the videos Do Ho has drawn inspired by our father’s world of work. I wanted it to be a somewhat moderated space where spectators could feel the world of the works, seeing them layer by layer.
Based on this spatial concept, I divided the exhibition space into two large sections. One is an exhibition space using the 77-inch LG transparent OLED TV and LG OLED evo G4, and the other is a space to show video works using a 55-inch LG OLED Signage installation. Meanwhile, an image of artist Suh Se Ok’s painting will be printed on a large piece of transparent fabric, measuring 7 meters across and 3.5 meters high, to be placed at the entrance of the exhibition space.
On an LG transparent OLED TV behind the large banner and an OLED TV installed on the middle wall, viewers will encounter works by Suh Se Ok reinterpreted by artist Suh Do Ho in video form. The videos shown on eight 77-inch LG OLED TVs sometimes appear as images overlapping the videos on the eight 77-inch LG OLED evo G4 screens installed on the walls behind them.
Live-action video footage of my late father painting on fabric, and animation videos of diverse themes, will alternate between “transparent mode” and “black screen mode”. Scenes of Suh Se Ok painting, his philosophy of art, and his world of art will overlap. In the same way that spectators are led into Suh Se Ok’s world of art via the transparent fabric at the entrance of the exhibition space, I wanted to make a space where Suh Se Ok’s paintings and Suh Doho’s new videos would be brought together through OLED’s “transparency.” In the space with 24 LG OLED signages installed on the wall, spectators will meet the documentary Mugeuk, in which they will see our father at work and hear his voice. In this overall space that bonds everything together, visitors can also appreciate seven original paintings by Suh Seok.
