New work from South Korean designer JinSik Kim

This week, JinSik Kim’s intriguing new collections Stone Age and Concrete Age will be available in our Shop. In advance of this exciting debut, we reached out to this rising-star designer to get the backstory on these fascinating and functional objects—part interactive sculpture, part desktop organizer.

WC: What was the inspiration behind your Stone Age and Concrete Age projects?

JK: I have always been curious about antique techniques and materials. For this particular project, I was inspired by rough stone age sculptures, which are timeless in their purity.

WC: These collections look at once prehistoric and futuristic. How do you see them?

JK: When I was a kid, I lived outside of Seoul with my grandfather and grandmother in a small village with many old customs. I loved its feeling and mood, because people made objects in a natural way, using materials surrounding the village. The meaning and function of the objects were clear to me.

I don’t want to reinterpret the attitude of people in the village—to make objects like my father and grandfather; I want to consider current culture around me. But I believe that you can make the future by imagining new stories somewhere between the past and the present.

WC: Whom do you imagine to be the ideal owner of these objects, and why?

JK: I imagine the person lives in an urban city and is curious about personal stories. Usually, I tell people a visual story drawn from my childhood. And then people are able to empathize because they remember their own childhoods. I want my pieces to touch people’s pureness in their brains and their hearts.

WC: What are you working on now? What’s next?

JK: I’ve recently created a brand called FACT NON FACT with Korean designers YuHun Kim and EunJae Lee. We opened a solo exhibition for the first collection named B-fit last August in Seoul, and we will launch the brand’s website later this month. Parts of B-fit will be shown at design shops like Chapter 1 in Seoul.

Personally, I am going to design something for Chapter 1 soon. The project is to formulate materiality for design products. And I have a plan for a new design story related to my design language called "Functional Sculpture," which walks the line between art and product design.

* All images courtesy of JinSik Kim.

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    Wava Carpenter

    Seit ihrem Studium in Designgeschichte an der Parsons School of Design hatte Wava schon in vielen Bereichen der Designkultur den Hut auf: sie lehrte Designwissenschaft, kuratierte Ausstellungen, überwachte Auftragsarbeiten, organisierte Vorträge, schrieb Artikel und erledigte alle möglichen Aufgaben bei Design Miami. Wava lässt den Hut aber im Büro – auf der Straße bevorzugt sie ihre Sonnenbrille.