This week, let’s check out the studio of Korean sculptor and installation artist Do Ho Suh. The son of a respected traditional Korean painter, Suh earned his bachelor’s degree in painting from Seoul National University, and later moved to New York to continue his education at RISD and Yale.

The artist’s sculptures tend to look in great detail at the nature of space and the way that people relate to it. His installations in particular often reference architectural elements. Speaking of space, Suh’s studio looks like a hobbyist’s dream, and might be the most organized studio I’ve ever seen in photos. There are so many small drawers, shelves and bins full of unknown tiny supplies and materials, it looks as though the artist has a serious love for model-making!

I like how many small action-figure type objects I can see in this image, packed together on some of the shelves behind the artist’s desk. Suh has made several large-scale installation involving multitudes of tiny human figures – often coming together to form huge forms that look completely removed from the human, something like a recent installation by Serkan Ozkaya. I wonder if the figures in this image will eventually be used in one of those sculptures, or if they are prototype mock-ups for other figures.

The overall look of the space is sleek, white and modern. Suh has a few different desks in his studio, each equipped with a large desk lamp, undoubtedly so he can pore over diagrams of future installations, or work on more of these tiny figures. It’s also likely that Suh employs a few assistants – I can image several people all working at these desks, late into the night. 

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