Perspectives: Do-Ho Suh

“Staircase-IV,” was the fourth in Suh’s more recent series of monumental staircases. Meticulously stitched out of a translucent red nylon fabric, “Staircase-IV” replicated the staircase in Suh’s New York apartment in 1:1 scale, complete with architectural detail that created an uncanny sense of the real while transforming density into lightness and the concrete into the remembered. The flight of stairs rose high above the ground before it reached a large and expansive plateau representing the apartment floor above. “Staircase-IV” invoked movement, impermanence and the promise of transcendence along the anonymous passage from one level to another.