San Francisco has a new reason to fall in love with wood all over again. The Asian Art Museum presents Kim Minwook: On Carving, Bending, and Binding Wood, the first solo museum exhibition by the South Korean craftsman — and it is pure magic.
Born in 1978, Kim is a self-taught woodturner who discovered his passion in 2013. His sculptures grow out of a deep conversation with his material: weather-worn wood, full of grain, cracks, knots and scars. Instead of hiding those marks of time, Kim lets them guide his hands, carrying the tree’s own life forward into each new form.
Carving, bending and binding become acts of listening rather than shaping. The result is a joyful, adventurous body of work that reimagines contemporary craft as a partnership between artist and tree.
The rising star has already turned heads internationally, earning the 2019 Lexus Creative Masters Award in Seoul and a shortlisting for the 2022 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. Now Bay Area visitors can experience his craft up close at the museum’s Koret Korean Galleries, on view through March 29, 2027 — included with general admission.
Photo: Asian Art Museum by Kevin Candland
