Patrick Kim-Gustafson Stockholm, 1986

Born of a Korean mother and Swedish father, Patrick Kim-Gustafson is a Swedish designer and artist based in Paris.

After several years working with reknowned industrial designer, Philippe Starck, 2020 marked a turning point in Kim-Gustafson's career. Taking advantage of time relieved by the pandemic, the artist-designer set up his studio in Loupchat, a small village in the Lot region of south-west France, the region of his wife’s family. Making his first creations there, the studio was inaugarated under the name, Ateljé Loupchat, with it's core beliefs dedicate to exploring the evolution from tree to object, nature to worked sculpture. Leaving behind his tedious work as a designer, most of which was done digitally, Ateljé Loupchat reinvigorated Kim-Gustafon's desire to work with materials directly and give life to personal creations beyond the implicit rules or limitations of the design world.

Unlike the work of a visual artist, which often involves adding material, Kim-Gustafson works by subtraction. From singular pieces of wood, the artist playfully maniuplates with their density and volume to produce new forms, such as 200-kilo vases housing a soliflor, a massive bench with a single, slender seat, or organic lamps perched on pedestals. The results are hybrid sculptures that are both delicate and daring, devoid of any obvious practical function, questioning the boundaries between practicality, aestheticism and the exuberance of object and work of art.