Chung Kim is a sculptor who specializes in woodworking based in New Jersey born and raised in Seoul, Korea. He works with locally sourced wood to create functional artwork that depicts the tranquil beauty of Korea. His focus is on combining elegant curves and simple straight lines of old roofs and rustic furniture inspired by the traditional Korean architecture and design to bring a contemporary lifestyle to ancient aesthetics. The artist’s nostalgia for his roots in Korean identification, create a deep longing to extract the refinement of Korean sensibility within the multicultural environment of American cultural trade.
Kim majored in sculpture at HongIk University in Seoul, Korea. Kim received an MFA degree from Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore. The artist came to the US in 1991 to study and follow Western Sculpture, readjusting his focus. He felt like the work was losing his identity and moved to New Jersey to work for a furniture company before starting his own. His captivation of Korean antique furniture in a new foreign context returned him to a place of pride in his own cultural identity in which his functional artworks continue to represent.
