South Korean artist Wonmin Park exhibits his aluminium furniture series in Manhattan

South Korean furniture artist Wonmin Park presents his first solo show, Plain Cuts, at The Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition highlights new iterations from his 2013 Haze resin series marked by its textured and geometric designs. The collection was Park’s first exploration of aluminium that turned into a full-on art collection that expressed aluminium’s elemental qualities. Plain Cuts is his survey of aluminium, a series of arty furniture made of stoic metallic sheets.

He explained his work style and material to The Architect’s Newspaper at the onset of the exhibition.  The artist reiterated the superb weight to strength ratio of aluminium and its formability that helped him to create light forms and structures with the metal. Once a luxury material, he feels, aluminium still has much more potential to be explored.  Besides creating beautiful designs in raw colours and textures, he also did colour variation with patina.

The key idea behind his new collection Plain Cuts is that they are cuts of plain aluminium sheets that are reconstructed to give a form. Working with metal gave him an opportunity to build structures with a strong material.  He said that he insisted on making essential simple forms that were interesting and useful.