Image: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is presenting ‘Kim Minwook: On Carving, Bending, and Binding Wood’ in the Koret Korean Galleries, where the exhibition runs from July 30, 2026, to March 29, 2027. The museum describes the show as Kim Minwook’s first solo museum exhibition and frames it around his work with weathered wood, a medium he approaches by responding to the grain, tension, movement, cracks, knots and scars already present in the material.
According to the museum’s exhibition page, Kim, who was born in South Korea in 1978, works with wood shaped by weather, time and nature. Rather than imposing a form on the material alone, he allows the wood to guide the sculptural process. Assistant Curator of Korean Art Yoon-Jee Choi characterizes that relationship directly, saying, ‘The wood itself is an active presence,’ and adds that it is ‘not simply an object shaped by the artist, but a collaborator.’
The exhibition situates Kim’s practice within contemporary craft, emphasizing a process that listens to material and preserves what the museum calls the quiet narratives held within wood. That approach is tied to Kim’s background as a self-taught craftsman. He discovered his passion for woodturning in 2013, and the museum notes that he soon received wider recognition for his work.
That recognition includes the 2019 Lexus Creative Masters Award in Seoul and selection as a shortlisted artist for the 2022 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. The museum uses those markers to place the exhibition within an emerging career that has moved from self-directed experimentation to international attention.
Installation views and selections from the exhibition show Kim’s sculptures in the museum’s Koret Korean Galleries, part of the Asian Art Museum’s broader Korean art program. The exhibition is included with general admission, according to the museum. The museum’s online listing also identifies the venue as the Koret Korean Galleries at 200 Larkin Street in San Francisco.
The Asian Art Museum’s announcement is presented as part of its exhibition programming rather than a temporary talk or one-off event. The museum’s page centers the objects themselves and Kim’s method, making the exhibition a survey of a practice built around the physical life of wood and the artist’s close attention to the natural forces already inscribed in it.
