Ghostly Household Objects Turn the Mundane Marvelous

The objects in our homes are the things that sustain us from day to day and help keep us alive and comfortable, yet we rarely stop to admire their forms. Sculptor Do Ho Suh makes it possible to enjoy household fixtures as objects of design and even beauty.


The Specimen Series is a set of polyester sculptures which look like common home objects: a toilet, a bathtub, a refrigerator, a radiator and more. The lightweight, transparent sculptures look almost like three-dimensional X-rays or ghostly, floating apparitions. They’re a bit eerie when seen alone, but almost seem to transform when grouped together into an installation that can be observed and interacted with by viewers in person.
Seeing any familiar object cast in a completely new and unexpected light helps us to see aspects of the object we would not ordinarily have noticed. These household fixtures, so bland and predictable in our own homes, become beautiful, delicate works of art with the help of an artist’s imagination.

Lehmann Maupin gives us the sculptor’s biography:
“Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, Seoul, Korea; lives and works in London, New York and Seoul) works across various media, creating drawings, film, and sculptural works that confront questions of home, physical space, displacement, memory, individuality, and collectivity. Suh is best known for his fabric sculptures that reconstruct to scale his former homes in Korea, Rhode Island, Berlin, London, and New York. Suh is interested in the malleability of space in both its physical and metaphorical forms, and examines how the body relates to, inhabits, and interacts with that space.”
“He is particularly interested in domestic space and the way the concept of home can be articulated through architecture that has a specific location, form, and history. For Suh, the spaces we inhabit also contain psychological energy, and in his work he makes visible those markers of memories, personal experiences, and a sense of security, regardless of geographic location.”