If the images of Jay Sae Jung Oh’s Salvage Furniture look familiar to you, it is likely because in recent years her pieces have entered and been widely exhibited in museum collections, including the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Cooper Hewitt. Her innovation is a fresh take on contemporary issues, combining original handcraftsmanship with sustainable statements into an intriguing narrative. This is what classifies her work as ‘antiques of the future,’ and ‘museum quality design.’ Meeting Oh at her newly-opened solo show Salvage 0.2: Domestic Landscape at Salon 94 was a great opportunity to fully understand her vision and her labor-intensive processes.
Oh’s sleek objects began their lives as discarded objects: toys, plastic furniture, inexpensive household objects, and other found items that we are all having. She takes from the waste and creates beautiful and somewhat enigmatic objects, meticulously wrapped in thin leather cords and composed into unique structures presented as luxurious, stunning furniture.
After completing her BFA and MFA in Fine Arts from the Kookmin University in Seoul, the Korean designer moved to Cranbrook where she received her MFA in 3D Design. It was at Cranbrook that she began to think differently about trash as a product of our society, and this became the point of departure for her Salvage series. Rubbish, according to her, can and should be redeemed. Not simply to be reclaimed, but to be made into beautiful things. With this series, Jay Sae Jung Oh is presenting a critical statement about the uselessness of objects in our society, about the consumer society of the 21st century, and about transformations—all while enriching the design experience.
The element of surprise is the most compelling to me; you observe these enigmatic objects, never guessing that under the meticulously-crafted surface there are buried memories—things that were cherished by people in their past and at some point, became unwanted. That is the core of this furniture of fantasy, which is, in fact, not unrealistic. This design is by no means radical or overbearing, but rather a soft statement, just like her own voice. In the past two decades, scholars and curators have produced a vast body of knowledge while defining and examining the production of contemporary design. They have analyzed the process of contruction of design culture and according to those sets of values, Jay Sae Jung Oh’s work is a representation of conteomporary design at its best.
