Where the Wild Chairs Are

"When he set out to find a place of his own a few years ago, he went in a more conventional direction. "I was looking for old architecture," Kim says. He found it in a prewar building in Bedford-Stuyvesant with coffered ceilings and original moldings and shutters. The parlor-floor unit, which features an original, elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece, became a period backdrop for his hypermodern aesthetic. He painted the walls green, which can read yellow depending on the light."

""I needed a defined living room and dining space because Iwanted to build a table and all the chairs around it," he says. "Iwanted to fill the apartment with 90 percent furniture that Imake." Kim was born in Seoul and grew up traveling with his ­parents. His father is a Won Buddhist minister who moved the family to England for a year; his mother is the painter Myoung Ae Lee, who encouraged her son to sketch the ­buildings he saw during boyhood trips."

"During the pandemic, Kim found more time to dedicate to his furniture practice, and in 2021, he had his first solo show at Marta Los Angeles. Now he builds and carves his pieces full time in a basement studio in Bushwick that, like home, is packed with his surreal furnishings. "I want it to be super-open-ended," Kim says of his work. "I am still very confused: Is it design, or is it sculpture?""

Minjae Kim produces playful, handcrafted furniture featuring eccentric details such as rabbit ears and carved fish and designs objects like the Hat lamp. He chose a prewar Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment with original moldings and a carved mantelpiece as a period backdrop, painting the walls a shifting green. Kim wanted a defined living and dining space to build a table and most of the chairs himself, intending the apartment to contain mostly self-made furniture. Born in Seoul, he traveled widely as a child, studied furniture and architecture, worked for Giancarlo Valle, and now runs a full-time woodshop and studio in Bushwick.

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