WARM CONTAINER

Lunch box / Hanji(Korean Traditional Paper) / 2011. autumn / self-production / Seoul, Korea

The warm container is designed as a lunch-box. When I was young I used to bring my lunch to school everyday. Most mothers in Korea, they had to prepare lunches everyday early in the morning for all those years through their children’s high school time. The Korean traditional paper ‘Hanji’ is soft and tender material but strong like a mother. I chose this material to illustrate the feeling of the warmth. I add- ed a layer of gauze on the casting process to give a touch of handicraft.

OPENNESS musicbox _ ECAL × REUGE

music box / brass, stainless steel, white oak / 2015.winter / @ECAL, Switzerland / selected project by REUGE / studio photo by ECAL, Younès Klouche

ECAL × REUGE

Opening a door to music to discover a beauty. Music boxes are often closed and the movement inside is not easily seen. Fascinated by the hidden mechanism under the box. The concept of this work is to show more of the beautiful mechanism and allow customers to have a playful music box. There are two metal pieces that cover the movement and protect it.

These covers slide in one direction from one end to the other or in the opposite direction. Under these covers, you will discover a golden-colored 36 note musical movement sat on oak. The graphics on the first cover, made with holes, allow you to see the second cover and create a dynamic object with an overlay of colors and materials.

NOWHERE

rush, hemp, wood / 2017.summer

collaboration with Nguten Thi Rhung & Tran Thi Trien / studio photos by Jandee Kim

I’ve been working with Nguyen Family in Triem Tay village, Vietnam for few years. They are specialized in making a traditional sleeping mat with the rush that grows near their house. My project for TypoCraft Helsinki’17 starts with a small hanging mat that they gave me as a New Year’s Day gift. We’ve been developing some other patterns together ever since and they came up with an idea of weaving words on the mat.

It was a special moment to realize that we all get inspired from one another in the process of making something beautiful together. In order to form the typeface on the mat, Nguyen family and myself decided to use the warp and the weft and hence the upper case and the lower case have all been mixed up. The word “NOWHERE” can either be read as “no where” or “now here.” In any cases, it will show the state of your mind.

NEW ONGGI tableware

Earthenware, Stoneware, Half glazed, Baked in electronic-kiln / 2014.summer / thrown-wheel by ceramic artist Wondong Shin / Icheon, Korea / studio photos by Jandee Kim

The goal of the project was to create a collection of tableware by using the mixture of two different properties of soils. Onggiware(Korean traditional pottery) is commonly used to store foods in the past in Korea. Traditionally, it was made out of the earth, deep in the lye and baked in the fire in the earthen-kiln for days.

As a result, each piece shows unexpected patterns with varying colors and textures. I was inspired by the variety of sense in pottery from the traditional method. The natural tones of colors were regenerated by mixing two different soils in a modern approach.

CLEAN SOAP

soap base / 2017. summer / with Kyusik Kim(graphic designer @studio Public Graphic)

CLEAN SOAP is one of the cleaning tools with the type inherent in the shape of letters from the word ‘CLEAN’. Hoping that users would enjoy cleaning more with this these tools, we used different forms and materials to create each object, such as broom, dustpan, soap and towel for the occasion of TypoCraft Helsinki to Seoul exhibition in January 2017. In order to continue to communicate with the word ‘CLEAN,’ we made a second version of ‘CLEAN’ with only one material, namely soap, that represents the word directly; also a product that can be used every day.

HABIT & REFLECTION brass basket

rush, brass / 2013.summer

collaboration with Fiber Weave / Kathmandu, Nepal /studio photos by Jandee Kim

It is natural to get attracted by what is being familiar with and natural to touch one’s mind when you are away from home. This experience eventually led to looking back on myself. I was surprised to see how easily I found myself fitting into a new environment while staying in Nepal for 3months.

The combination of my previous experiences and sensibility to an unfamiliar place became a useful tool to demonstrate my own design language. The natural materials and color tones of Nepal fascinated me to create a series of baskets and rugs. Each object is influencing the others to make a range of works in series.

COLORSCAPE HoiAn mat

rush, hemp, powder coated metal / 2014.summer

commissioned by Arumjigi Culture Keepers Foundation / collaboration with Nguten Thi Rhung & Tran Thi Trien / studio photos by JongKeun Lee

In the street of old town in Hoi An, Vietnam, lines of electronic poles make different landscapes of shadow from the morning till the night. I was inspired by these changes of the scenery. I translated it into the traditional sleeping mat, which is structured in horizontal lines. Local people have long been using the sleeping mat to cool down the heat during their sleep under the tropical climate condition .

The mat is made out of local material ‘rush’ which grows on the riverside. Two people are teamed up to produce the weaving mat. I aimed to find the possibilities of using the traditional mat in different forms of households. I proposed it could be something put next to the door, such as a side bench, a basket or different size of doormats.

Jungyou Choi works as an independent designer, is interested in trivial daily matters and locality. Recently traveled around India, Nepal, Namibia and Vietnam for a couple of years for projects.

Jungyou Choi

PaperBricks Pallet 2016, paperbricks

Using the PaperBricks, the PaperBricks Pallet series were created to show how the PaperBricks could be used constructively. The series consists of two coffee tables and a bench.

PaperBricks Pallet Coffee Table Detail

PaperBricks Pallet Bench , 2016

PaperBricks Pallet Series, 2016, paperbricks

Alchemist’s Furniture 2017, newspaper, wood glue, wood

The Alchemist’s Furniture is series of furniture which explores the transformation of a material into another element through the application and the technique. Paper is sculpted into branch like structures which has the aesthetics of a marbled stone, while having the tactility of both rough stone and soft paper. Just like an alchemist would, a lifeless material from old newspapers have been given a new life as a furniture of another element.

WAXED 2015, paraffin wax, wood

Wax is a material which gradually disappears over time. With this project, I wanted to use the wax to freeze the time and also hold the construction together.

PaperBricks_Sculpt series 2017, paperbricks, paper, wood glue, wood

PaperBricks_Sculpt series is an exploration into the material and its contrasting characteristics. Paper can be both soft and hard, rough and smooth, systematic and irregular which can be seen in this series. The soft surfaces, rigid shapes in contrast to rough and natural forms. The contrast is also in the way of working. The mould manufactured bricks to freely sculpted legs.

WooJai Lee is Korean - New Zealander designer based in Eindhoven, Netherlands. He likes to work with different materials, experimenting and exploring their hidden potentials. He works in both constructional and sculptural ways, mixing the qualities of the two to create unique style of works. They are highly influenced by his interest in materials, craftsmanship, drawing and sculptures.

WooJai Lee

— Voice and Dance Performance, 15min Public spaces at Palais Garnier, Paris, France Project by Ayoung Kim & Sébastien Bertaud Music Composition: Hyun-Hwa Cho

The project was realized under Pavillon Neuflize OBC program, research lab of the Palais de Tokyo 2015/2016 during its collaboration with the Opéra national de Paris, the Institut national de l’audiovisuel and the Groupe de recherches musicales (INA– GRM).

The bitumen appears both in ancient myths of great floods common to humankind and in the construction of Palais Garnier, an Opera house in Paris. When Palais Garnier was under construction, a branch of the Seine flooded. The architect Charles Garnier built an underground reservoir plastered with bitumen in order to stop the flooding that would not stop even after months of efforts to empty it. This space has protected Palais Garnier as the ballast water puts weight on the hull to stabilize the unloaded ship.

The artist has constructed In This Vessel We Shall Be Kept from appropriating common elements across time and space, which include the vessel (or the arc) waterproofed with bitumen to save the humanity from rain falling night and day for many days, the great flood mythologies and catastrophes.

In This Vessel We Shall Be Kept_Performance (2016) — Voice and Dance Performance, 15min

The project takes root in the basement of the Palais Garnier – specifically in the depths of its famous underground “lake” – to stage a long forgotten mythical flood. This artificial reservoir, which dates back to the construction of the edifice, is coated with pitch – a petroleum derivative with waterproofing properties – with which Noah supposedly caulked the hull of his ark. The Opera Garnier will become the flamboyant manifestation of a forgotten flood. (Chloé Fricout)

The bitumen appears both in ancient myths of great floods common to humankind and in the construction of Palais Garnier, an Opera house in Paris. When Palais Garnier was under construction, a branch of the Seine flooded. The architect Charles Garnier built an underground reservoir plastered with bitumen in order to stop the flooding that would not stop even after months of efforts to empty it.

This claustrophobic space has protected Palais Garnier as the ballast water puts weight on the hull to stabilize the unloaded ship. On top of this historical fact of Palais Garnier, the structural similarities of place inside of the opera house called ‘nef (nave)’ in French which is structurally shaped like a boat and designates the central corridor of the temple/cathedral.

The artist has constructed In This Vessel We Shall Be Kept from appropriating common elements across time and space, which include the vessel (or the arc) waterproofed with bitumen to save the humanity from rain falling night and day for many days, the great flood mythologies and catastrophes: the archetype and mythical elements of the great flood make common appearances from the Bible, Quran and the Epic of Gilgamesh of the ancient Mesopotamia which is now a troubled region. Also the structure of Palais Garnier and contemporary disaster narratives are diffused in the project.

The project was realized under Pavillon Neuflize OBC program, research lab of the Palais de Tokyo 2015/2016 during its collaboration with the Opéra national de Paris, the Institut national de l’audiovisuel and the Groupe de recherches musicales (INA– GRM).

Ayoung Kim (Currently lives and works in Paris and Seoul.)

Interested in the relationship between image, language, voice/sound and the formal properties of these elements, Ayoung Kim’s porous narrative structures seek possible integrations, articulations and collisions of things in between time, space, structure and syntax. In doing so, Ayoung Kim plays with the notions of crossings, transmissions, translations, transpositions and reversibility by focusing on unlikely encounters of ideas. Open to multidisciplinary and criss-crossing collective working processes, she adopts the devices of storytelling, narrativity and rhetoric to evoke alternative forms of reading, listening and thinking of our present human condition. Her work stands as experimentation focused on various types of writing and the narrative structure, on visual, sonic and linguistic levels.

Ayoung Kim had solo shows at Melbourne Festival (2017); Palais de Tokyo (2016) and created a performance at the national opera house in Paris, Palais Garnier (2016). She presented her works at the 56th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); Maraya Art Centre, Dubai, UAE (2015); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2012); Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2012); Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York, US (2011); Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro(MAM), Brazil (2011); 176/Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2011); Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2010) and many others. She was a resident artist at Pavillon Neuflize OBC Research Lab of Palais de Tokyo (2015-2016), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2012). She was awarded The British Institution Award from Royal Academy of Arts in the UK in 2010 and Young Artist of the Year Award from the Ministry of Culture in Korea, 2015.

Ayoung Kim