Fiberglass that comes as a fabric and Douglas fir carved out of a block are the raw stock of Selected Works, the lamps and chairs Minjae Kim builds by hand in New York.
Minjae Kim drapes the fiberglass across a frame, runs it through the sewing machine to quilt it, or gathers it around the light it is meant to carry, and a coat of resin, applied last, fixes whatever shape it has taken. Rolls of it, soaked through with resin, are moulded into lamps and chairs. Sure Shear Chair keeps the method in plain view: a few sheets of the quilted fiberglass, hung like blankets around four wooden posts.
The hand-carved wood starts from something just as basic. Many of the carved chairs begin as what Kim calls a "blank chair": nine pieces of solid Douglas fir, put together as one block, which he then carves down or adds to. Ensemble of Chairs, 17 by 14 by 32 inches, is Douglas fir in a range of finishes, described on the site as the same chair in endless variation. The pair of Lacquered Chairs, in stained and lacquered fir, comes with one line of argument, that two beat one. Torso Table is oak finished in tung oil; past the materials, its page says only that it is very sexy.
His site describes what comes of all this as "simple, quirky, imperfect, incohesive, impractical, irrational and often emotional one-liners revolving around an idea." A work page rarely runs past a size, a list of materials and a single line. The site's first lamp, Canopy Lamp, measures 100 by 40 by 30 inches in quilted fiberglass, bamboo and wood: a light carried above the head, held in balance by a set of wooden weights. Helmet Lamp, in fiberglass and wood, has a translucent helmet and two glowing eyes. The Floor Lamp in Fiberglass shares the Canopy's three materials and gets no line at all. Fish, which comes in varying sizes, goes back to a daydream about becoming a fishmonger.
Kim has said he is still unsure whether the work is design or sculpture. What he does insist on is use. A few fiberglass blankets on four posts and a carved block of fir answer to the same rule: "If it's a chair, a person should be able to sit on it and be relatively comfortable."
