(JIMIN CHAE)
On 23 Might 2025, Hermès unveiled its newest artist home windows on the Liat Towers boutique. “Three Columns” is conceived by Seoul-based artist Jimin Chae, whose works blur the traces between fantasy and actuality via two-dimensional panorama work that includes disparate and sometimes curious parts. You’d see a visitors cone seemingly floating mid-air in a single, and animals positioned as if they’ve chanced upon a wierd scene in others.
Whereas Chae’s works look extremely crisp and virtually print-like, they’re really painted by hand — as we found via an artwork workshop led by the artist himself. The actual fact alone makes him the right collaborator in step with Hermès’ working theme for the yr, Drawn to Craft.
We chat with Chae to seek out out extra about his inventive course of, how he approached his second collaboration with Hermès, and if the inclusion of horses and the usage of a definite Hermès orange was him manifesting the chance to work with the Maison in the future.
Firstly, thanks for the very insightful workshop. You appear very snug instructing, and as I perceive, you additionally do educate at an artwork college. Was instructing artwork one thing that you simply thought you’d do? How did that come about?
JIMIN CHAE (JC): I’ve been instructing college students at artwork academies since my early twenties. For artwork majors, it was one of the accessible part-time jobs that allowed us to utilize our abilities, and I naturally started this work upon the advice of my mentor. Over time, I ultimately got here to show at Yewon College, a center college specialised within the arts. Now, I strategy this position with a robust sense of accountability, aiming to instil the fitting mindset and perspective in college students who’re simply starting to pursue the humanities as their chosen subject.
“Three Columns” by Jimin Chae intentionally blurs the traces between fantasy and actuality.
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How did you come to develop your artwork type?
JC: In my late twenties, after graduating from college and starting my journey as an artist, I keep in mind striving to precise the visible stress and coexistence of “flatness” and “spatiality” inside a single canvas. Within the technique of developing an imaginary area born from the artist’s creativeness on the materially flat, white floor of the canvas, I neither selected one attribute over the opposite nor sought to create visible confusion. As a substitute, I aimed to let the 2 qualities coexist in an ambiguous relationship throughout the identical body. This pursuit of the obscure boundary between two coexisting parts has grow to be central to my inventive strategy.
In my newer work, I’ve prolonged this exploration past flatness and area to incorporate the ambiguous boundaries between actuality and unreality, nature and artificiality.
Your work includes making a scene out of disparate parts, virtually like a collage, and also you paint them at occasions referencing pictures that you simply took your self. What goes behind conceptualising every work? Is there a selected concept earlier than you even start placing the weather collectively?
JC: My work usually begins by developing incomplete or imperfect constructions inside an indeterminate area that resembles a pure subject. On this course of, I take advantage of easy 3D software program to manage mild, shadow, and vanishing factors, composing a extremely calculated and artificially drafted scene. Inside this scene, I incorporate objects, figures, and animals—principally drawn from pictures I’ve taken myself—arranging them in a manner that seems harmonious but subtly unnatural, including a way of ambiguous relationships to the composition.
Solely after going via these work-planning processes, I transfer on to portray. As you may sense from this description, for me, composition is just not an emotional course of — it’s a extremely rational one which focuses on the formal qualities of the topic. Extra particularly, I assemble the picture primarily based on visible parts corresponding to form, shade, directionality, and motion.
The colors that you simply use are sometimes vivid and wealthy — they’re very hardly ever moody and even sombre. Why is that?
JC: As talked about, the method of composition in my work includes little or no emotional enter. To be sincere, selecting colors continues to be tougher for me than working with kind. Nevertheless, when the colors seem vivid and wealthy, it is actually because I’m utilizing them deliberately—to stress the presence of sure constructions or objects positioned throughout the scene. Even now, I hardly ever really feel full confidence in the case of color; actually, it stays an experimental side of my observe.
You first labored with Hermès for the Maison’s home windows in Shanghai in 2023. However even earlier than that, you’ve utilised the Hermès orange (and horses too) in fairly quite a lot of your earlier works. Is there a purpose why you gravitate in direction of that shade of orange?
JC: Within the early levels of my observe, the sky served as a key motif via which I explored the strain and coexistence between flatness and spatiality. Because of this, lots of my early works—and even some latest ones—function the sky or flat pictures symbolizing the sky, making blue tones, particularly sky blue, dominant in my palette. Over time, as I started to mirror extra on the usage of numerous colours, I seemed for a tone that may distinction with the blue hues I incessantly used. That led me to orange. To at the present time, sky blue and orange stay the colors I really feel most assured utilizing in my work.
Earlier than discussing horses, it’s extra vital to clarify why I began portray animals within the first place. In my earlier work, the usage of human figures was fairly chilly and rational. Inside the constructed scenes, the figures would face in several instructions, by no means assembly the viewer’s gaze—as an alternative, they turned away or had their faces obscured. This was a deliberate machine to forestall anyone determine from being perceived because the “fundamental character.” The characters had been eliminated, leaving solely their gestures behind.
Nevertheless, I started to really feel that this strategy was making the already cool and distant ambiance of the portray really feel much more indifferent from the viewer. That’s once I first started portray wild animals corresponding to mallards, horses, and reindeer. In my works, animals face the viewer and appear to acknowledge their presence. In comparison with human figures, animals are inherently extra emotional topics. This, after all, is one other instance of the work perspective of pursuing the “ambiguous boundary” I discussed earlier.
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“Three Columns” is your newest work for Hermès. What have you ever learnt from the primary collaboration that you simply’ve maybe put into observe for this explicit set up?
JC: To place it merely, I approached the given area on the Liat Tower with the mindset: “Let the flatness stay even flatter, and the three-dimensional much more spatial.” This try to create a extra lively and excessive visible distinction stemmed from what I discovered throughout my first collaboration in Shanghai. In the end, all of it comes right down to the identical query I’ve all the time grappled with in my portray observe: how can the themes I continually discover on a flat floor be translated and visualized inside an actual, bodily area?
You’ve talked about that numerous the weather in “Three Columns” characterize how Hermès continues to problem custom with modernity. What was the conceptualisation course of like for “Three Columns”?
JC: I do not forget that once I was first approached for the collaboration, I used to be given a presentation on how the model reinterprets and makes use of its traditions in a recent context. What left a very sturdy impression on me was the story of how Robert Dumas discovered inspiration in an anchor chain he got here throughout by the seaside—an remark that ultimately led to the design of Chaîne d’ancre. What struck me much more was how this single motif has undergone numerous reinterpretations and variations over the previous 80 years, persevering with to be reinvented in numerous supplies and varieties. This capacity to acknowledge design worth in one thing seemingly trivial, to create from it, and to maintain that legacy alive via fixed fashionable reinterpretation—that, to me, defines the id of this model.
I don’t often strategy the canvas with a grand narrative or predetermined which means. My preliminary concept was easy: to sketch out the cube-like area of the Liat Tower’s home windows in my sketchbook, and loosely draw inside it whereas staying true to the theme Drawn to Craft. I drew three diagonal traces falling throughout the area, which turned the “Three Columns”. These slanted traces ultimately took the type of classical Greek columns — not as an intentional image or mythological reference, however somewhat as a strategy to introduce a proper stress into the area.
Nevertheless, because the work progressed, these columns started to tackle new meanings. They began to counsel a movement of time—a construction that hints at custom, the current, and the longer term as chance. The objects organized across the columns each reference the model’s heritage and contribute to a subtly fantastical ambiance, blurring the boundary between actuality and creativeness.
Fashionable imaginings constructed upon the strong construction of custom—that, to me, displays the artistic spirit that Hermès persistently pursues. “Three Columns” is my private interpretation and expression of that philosophy.
There’s numerous play between actuality and fantasy in “Three Columns” and I believe it echoes quite a bit about how vogue and luxurious are considered as effectively. What is probably an thrilling half about working with a luxurious maison like Hermès?
JC: That’s an fascinating level. If a luxurious model like Hermès seeks to collaborate with a recent artist like myself, it’s possible as a result of they count on me to strategy the empty area of the window in the identical manner I strategy a clean canvas—via the lens of my very own course of and perspective.
Whereas vogue manufacturers and modern artists is probably not far aside throughout the broad realm of “artwork,” their basic functions are fairly completely different. Vogue, at its core, is constructed upon performance and wonder for the wearer. Artwork, however, usually leans towards leaving room for ambiguity—for feelings and ideas that resist speedy interpretation. That’s why I discover the strain and delicate dissonance that come up when these two worlds—with such completely different directionalities—come collectively so fascinating.
You appear very open to others’ artistic concepts and artistry. However how do you deal with criticisms of your personal work?
JC: Precisely. Even throughout the worlds I create on canvas, I hardly ever assemble a selected narrative—as an alternative, I go away area for the viewer’s creativeness to unfold. My pursuit of ambiguous boundaries might, to some, seem to be an evasive or passive stance. I perceive that such an strategy could possibly be open to criticism, and I stay receptive to these views with humility. Nevertheless, regardless of that openness, I maintain a robust conviction and a sure stubbornness in the case of the strategies and attitudes I’ve developed over a few years of evolving observe.
What do you hope folks will really feel or take into consideration after they see “Three Columns”?
JC: Like all of my earlier works, this piece was meant to not convey a selected narrative, however to stay an open area stuffed with numerous meanings formed by the viewer’s interpretation and expertise. I hope that when folks encounter “Three Columns”, they every convey their very own tales to thoughts, pausing for a second to mirror or really feel feelings. I don’t consider {that a} clear, definitive reply from the artist is important on this course of. Quite the opposite, I hope the work turns into a spot the place a number of interpretations and responses coexist, permitting every individual to find their very own distinctive which means inside it.
What are you engaged on subsequent?
JC: Just lately, together with my final two collaborations, I’ve been increasing my observe into set up work. Nevertheless, I maintain a important view of myself in that I haven’t but discovered a compelling purpose why the issues I explored in flat portray should essentially proceed in spatial kind. Due to this, it could possibly be stated that my set up works so far have been pushed extra by the “will” to aim than by a clearly outlined “purpose.” Though I don’t but have a concrete plan for a selected challenge, I intend to first deeply mirror on the need for my work to evolve into installations, in search of a significant justification for this transition.
Jimin Chae‘s artist home windows, “Three Columns”, are on view now till 20 August 2025 on the Hermès Liat Towers boutique. This interview has been edited for size and readability.
This text was first seen on Esquire Singapore.
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