Jong KimJongkim design studio
Concept
Consolation — In the era of isolation, we’ve encountered 2022, standing in the middle of a paradigm shift, which was triggered by COVID-19. The moments I, as a spatial strategy designer who communicates with the world offline with ‘space’ as a medium, engrossed myself in my works, exploring the essence of ‘space’ amid the change where the boundary between online and offline space gets blurred and in isolation from what is called ‘the current trends’ while watching the nature of space, unlike its initial purpose, changing or losing to temporary fads that are reflected on online channels, couldn’t avoid ‘solitude’, ‘isolation’, ‘the sense of disconnection’ and ‘anxiety’ creeping on me slowly. Now is the time we all need ‘consolation’. And it commences with empathy. The dark world. And one chair in it. When closing my eyes in the space, I hear buzzing music that defies the word ‘isolation’. Though the world is dark, I feel a sense of isolation when seeing others’ festive lives in their SNS. It is ‘that’ that I want to share with you when you come into this room. In me who is looking for a path I‘ve never been to, I see sixteen-year-old me who have just arrived in Paris, the strange city to me. I felt stuck in a dead-end in the darkness that blinds me. So everything I saw at my nose was challenging. But I didn’t run away from it. I faced it with die-hard courage. So those days were beautiful. When I get back to those days, I am ‘powered up’. I believe that true consolation is the process in which we start with empathy that makes us (con) united (sol) and we gain the strength to seek the way that makes us (con) wedge our way (solve). I hope you will find new strength in this space as I do.