Minjae Kim is a Korean artist working in New York witha background in architecture and furniture design. His practice in furniture and objects acts as an antithesis to the restrictions in architectural practice in time, scale, and accessibility. The results are simple, quirky, imperfect, incoherent, impractical, irrational and often emotional one-liners revolving around an idea.

For years, Minjae Kim was known as an architect and interior designer in the US and Korea. Then, the pandemic provided an opportunity for him to pursue a multi-disciplinary studio practice, working at the intersections of interiors, furniture, sculpture, and art. Kim’s sculptural furniture pieces have a poetic flair, ranging from rabbit-eared wood and fiberglass chairs, to desks inspired by the works of Henry Matisse. At its core, his work addresses his complicated identity as a Korean artist who creates works inspired by his culture, as well as Western typologies. Through his work, he creates environments that make room for this dual identity, and provides for the artist a space for belonging.

His approach to materials also defies expectation; the carved wood sometimes looks supple, like a chair that has a handprint carved into it, or is contoured to appear to have been slowly worn down over time. Besides wood, he works with rolls of quilted fiberglass, which he drenches with resin and molds into organic shapes for chairs and lamps.“They’ve become kind of like autonomous things,” Kim says of his furniture.“They embody these characters and then they start to engage with each other.”