Do-Ho Suh is the Korean artist who created a miniature version of his childhood home crashing into the side of an apartment building. He was born in South Korea and attended Seoul National University before going on to earn a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University. Today he lives and works in New York, London and Seoul. A lot of his work revolves around the meaning of home.
Fallen Star is hard to miss. The 18th addition to the renowned collection of site-specific sculptures at UC San Diego is in a central campus location. Perched on the corner of the seventh story of Jacobs Hall, also known as Engineering Building 1, the house looks, indeed, like it came crashing down from above. It took Fallen Star seven years to realize. A classic New England cottage, painted light blue with white trim, it was modeled after a home in Providence, near where Suh lived. The slope of the floor is only five degrees, which is not that much, Suh says, though most visitors apparently tend to grip the door frame as they enter. Inside, the place feels familiar and cozy. The found furniture is a bit, there are family photos, books, touristy knickknacks and the sorts of things you might see in a lived-in house: keys on the coffee table, a cell phone, a remote.
This home too feels like a place of refuge, passed down through the generations — except for the fact that it rests at a stomach-flipping tilt and hangs over a daunting drop.
