Sangwoo Kim

Sangwoo Kim was born in Korea in 1980 and currently lives and works in France. He received his degree from the National University in Seoul and is the recipient of several prestigious awards and grants. In 2017 he was a LOEWE Craft prize finalist. Sangwoo’s work is represented in the permanent collections of several international museums.

The designer is inspired by the shapes and the colors of nature. As Sangwoo notes “In nature the colors are not made out of pure red, yellow or blue. Each color is made of combinations. In my work, I express this natural feeling with several layers of colors. Colors are allways a mix, and depending on how they are layered they change. I play with the arrangement and thickness of colored layers  in order to create deep shade of hues”.

Kim makes his sculptures and vessels with coils or slabs of clay and applies several layers of colored slips. After firing the artsit grinds and polishes his works instead of using a glaze. Through this process, he slowly creates the patterns and colors of the surface.

Sangwoo is inspired by rounded and circular designs. Kim himself reveals that “rounded froms have the power to give imagination and emotion to human beeings. It is a topic with the possibility of expressing eternal beauty. The rounded shape contains the charm of the person who made it according to how the form is handled”.