When Jeongseob Kim is asked about his favorite work or piece, he says, “I don’t seem to have produced a satisfactory piece. I don’t know when my masterpiece will be realized.”

The very demanding Jeongseob Kim was born in 1984 in South Korea. He trained in woodworking at Hongik University’s College of Fine Arts in Seoul, before earning a master’s degree in design from Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom. His work has traveled, most notably to Design Miami/Basel in 2010, but also to the Salone Del Mobile and the London Design Fair in 2016. His work is in the collections of many domestic and foreign institutions, including the National Hangeul Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, but also in prestigious stores such as the Louis Vuitton space in Shenzhen, China.

A career fully established for this designer who notes with pain the standardization of design: “Especially in Korea, everyone lives in the same apartment, the same interior and uses electronic devices and furniture that look the same (…) I want my objects to be felt by people as something different,” he explains. This desire to stand out comes to life in his latest unique collection, which focuses on the use of copper. “It is a series of works that I created to show the artisanal dimension in the work of metals like copper with the proper use of machinery. I tried to express the metal plate in a three-dimensional way with appropriate use of bending and cold joints, and made it a module to create various functionalities.” The result? An elegant collection, which presents metalwork through an innovative grammar and looks like nobody’s business.

https://www.instagram.com/jeongseob_kim/

Lisa Agostini