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Do Ho Suh — Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA
Do Ho Suh

Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA

2011

Rendered in translucent polyester fabric stretched over a skeleton of stainless steel tubes, this monumental architectural installation reconstructs in precise, haunting detail the corridor, staircase, and two apartment units of a specific address in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood. The work hovers between presence and absence, its pale fabric skin admitting light and revealing structural seams, so that what appears solid dissolves upon closer inspection into something spectral and permeable. At its full assembled scale, spanning corridor and staircase dimensions of nearly 488 by 66 by 96 inches and apartment units measuring well over 400 inches in their largest dimension, the piece envelops viewers within an architecture that is simultaneously intimate and uncanny, familiar in its domestic logic yet estranged by its immateriality. Do Ho Suh has long examined the psychological weight of dwelling, exploring how the spaces we inhabit shape identity and how memory adheres to architecture long after physical separation. This work belongs to his celebrated series of fabric reconstructions of homes he has lived in across multiple countries, each one a meditation on displacement, belonging, and the tension between permanence and transience. The Chelsea address encoded in the title functions not merely as documentary information but as a kind of elegy, anchoring an ephemeral structure to a real place and a real life while simultaneously demonstrating how tenuous that anchor always is. Collected widely by major institutions, works from this series represent a defining contribution to contemporary sculpture and installation, and this example, documented in its 2014 presentation at The Contemporary Austin, offers collectors an extraordinary opportunity to acquire a work of significant cultural and historical standing.

Medium
Polyester fabric and stainless steel tubes
Signed
Yes
Location
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA

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About this work

Do Ho Suh, Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, 2011

Rendered in translucent polyester fabric stretched over a skeleton of stainless steel tubes, this monumental architectural installation reconstructs in precise, haunting detail the corridor, staircase, and two apartment units of a specific address in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood. The work hovers between presence and absence, its pale fabric skin admitting light and revealing structural seams, so that what appears solid dissolves upon closer inspection into something spectral and permeable. At its full assembled scale, spanning corridor and staircase dimensions of nearly 488 by 66 by 96 inches and apartment units measuring well over 400 inches in their largest dimension, the piece envelops viewers within an architecture that is simultaneously intimate and uncanny, familiar in its domestic logic yet estranged by its immateriality. Do Ho Suh has long examined the psychological weight of dwelling, exploring how the spaces we inhabit shape identity and how memory adheres to architecture long after physical separation. This work belongs to his celebrated series of fabric reconstructions of homes he has lived in across multiple countries, each one a meditation on displacement, belonging, and the tension between permanence and transience. The Chelsea address encoded in the title functions not merely as documentary information but as a kind of elegy, anchoring an ephemeral structure to a real place and a real life while simultaneously demonstrating how tenuous that anchor always is. Collected widely by major institutions, works from this series represent a defining contribution to contemporary sculpture and installation, and this example, documented in its 2014 presentation at The Contemporary Austin, offers collectors an extraordinary opportunity to acquire a work of significant cultural and historical standing.

Medium
Polyester fabric and stainless steel tubes
Year
2011
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA

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Collected by

Richard Caswell