Design Directory Spotlight: Minjae Kim
The Korean-born, New York-based designer Minjae Kim, with roots in architecture and furniture design, offers a subversive counterpoint to the constraints of architectural practice—time, scale, and accessibility.
We explore Minjae Kim’s practice as well as his inspiration and process behind a recent exhibition, Ba-Da, at Nina Johnson Gallery (@ninajohnsongallery).
Kim’s work strips design down to its essence, resulting in objects that are unapologetically imperfect, playful, and emotionally charged. Each piece functions as a distilled gesture: a quirky, often irrational one-liner that balances on the edge of form and idea.
In his most recent solo show, Ba-Da, the sea is explored both on a macro and micro level. Kim’s father grew up by the port of Busan, a seaside city that counters Western associations with the peace and quiet of life by the ocean.
There is a new strain of chaos in Kim’s most recent body of work that speaks to his paternal inheritance, a vibration that the artist embodies in his personhood and lifestyle, balanced by the relative peace of his mother’s spirit and paintings.
His practice evolved first out of an architectural language and only recently began to explicitly engage with his two cultures—Korean and American.
Quilted fiberglass, a unique material intervention of Kim’s, covers light fixtures disguised as boat hardware. Wood, stained, waxed, painted, and lovingly hand-carved, serves as load-bearing bases and frames.
Plastic appears as a direct reference to contemporary Korean seaside life while also gesturing to the pollution of our global seas—a crisis driven largely by the Western world.
