Space as a Medium:
In Conversation with Artist and Designer Na Kim

How did you first meet Tomáš, and what made you want to develop this exhibition together?
Last year, I visited the Graphic Design Department at Yale School of Art as an external critic, where Tomáš was developing his thesis project. Interestingly, I had already come across his work by accident at a book fair before meeting him. When we later met at Yale, I recognized his name. We discovered mutual connections and common friends, which made it easy to start a conversation.

At the time, this project was still taking shape. What fascinated me was that the story always seemed open to new directions. Chance played a huge role in its development, with accidental encounters and unexpected discoveries constantly expanding the project. It started with a typeface, called Amelia but gradually grew into something much broader.

Through one coincidence after another, Tomáš met different people, uncovered new stories, and the project kept unfolding. I found myself drawn to the project, and when Tomáš later mentioned the idea of an exhibition, the collaboration developed very naturally. We ended up spending almost a year preparing it together.
 

The project feels very personal, even though it begins with a typeface.
Absolutely. Tomáš is a graphic designer focused on type design, but this exhibition goes far beyond that. The story centers on the life of Stanley Daivs, the designer who created Amelia. And the people in this story, coming from many different backgrounds, bring their own perspectives.

In a way, the typeface becomes humanized. Many visitors are surprised to discover that Amelia is both the name of a typeface and the name of a person. Tomáš intentionally wanted to preserve that ambiguity. The text offers hints but never fully reveals what Amelia is.

On LOOM and Creating Space

Could you introduce a few projects that best represent the character of LOOM ?
Rather than pointing to a single example, I think the character of LOOM emerges through its different chapters overall. Each one takes a different form depending on the collaborator and the ideas being explored.

What remains consistent is the format: visitors enter the space individually and spend an hour alone with the work. For me, those encounters are often more important than the physical installation itself. I think the one-hour sessions function as essential appendices that complete the experience. The last chapter, Have You Seen Amelia? is a good example. It brings together installation, sound, storytelling, typography, and a specially curated playlist into a single experience. More broadly, LOOM is less about presenting exhibitions and more about creating situations in which ideas, artworks, time, space, and visitors can interact in unexpected ways.

What led you to create LOOM, and how has running it influenced your own practice?
I would say it happened somewhat accidentally, but the desire behind it had been with me for a long time. Before LOOM, I had experience running artist spaces with friends and curating projects, but I was never interested in operating a traditional gallery.

At a certain point, I realized I wanted more room for resolving my questions and curiosities. For many years, I worked within frameworks created by others, often treating exhibitions as extensions of my design practice. Eventually, I became interested in creating situations that originated from my own interests rather than someone else's brief.

LOOM grew out of that desire. I don't really think of it as a gallery or project space. For me, it's more like a medium—one that enables me to experiment with formats that would be difficult to realize in a conventional exhibition setting. The one-hour sessions, the intimate encounters, the blurring of public and private space, and the active role of the visitor are all essential elements of LOOM. As the project continues to evolve, it also continues to shape my own practice.

As you mentioned, LOOM doesn't follow the rhythm of a conventional gallery. How do you approach exhibitions here?
It's evolving very organically. Maybe twice a year I invite collaborators or organize exhibitions, but otherwise I use the space for my own thoughts, experiments, or installations. I want to keep it as open and flexible as possible.

I refer to the larger installations, in the form of exhibitions, as chapters. But honestly, the Friday sessions—when visitors spend an hour experiencing a chapter on their own—are often more important to me than the exhibition itself. In that sense, LOOM is not only about presenting work, but also about creating the conditions for individual experiences to unfold. What interested you in creating this one-hour, one-person encounter, and how do visitors typically respond to it?
It began with a very simple, maybe even naïve idea. Whenever I visit exhibitions, I treasure those rare moments when I'm completely alone with an artwork. I wanted to create a space where that feeling could become the central focus.

Here at LOOM, most visitors arrive as complete strangers and are often slightly uncomfortable at first. They're alone in a space that is both public and private, and they don't quite know how to behave. But gradually they settle in. You hear footsteps, pages turning, someone sitting down, or someone exploring the space. Little by little, the atmosphere changes.

To me, it almost feels as if we're performing together. Maybe I'm backstage and they're onstage—or the other way around. We're sharing the same moment without directly interacting, and that creates a unique sense of attention and presence.

The one-hour format is closely intertwined with music. How did the idea of using playlists emerge, and what do they add to the experience?
I spent a long time thinking about how to structure the experience. How do you mark the beginning and end of an hour? Marking it with some kind of alarm felt too artificial, so I turned to music as a more natural way of measuring time.

I enjoy making playlists, and over time they became one of the defining elements of LOOM. They guide visitors through the hour while shaping its rhythm and atmosphere.

For each chapter, the music is closely tied to the exhibition itself. For Have You Seen Amelia?, I asked Tomáš to create a one-hour playlist based on album covers featuring the Amelia typeface. Most of the tracks come from the 1960s and 1970s, adding another layer to the story and historical context of the project.

On Living and Working Between Europe and Korea

You work between Berlin and Seoul. What differences do you notice in your ways of observing, your working attitude, and your perspective on space in the two cities?
The biggest difference is the way people experience time. Whenever I return to Korea, I'm reminded how fast paced and demanding life can be there. There is a strong energy and efficiency that pushes things forward, but it can also feel overwhelming.

Berlin offers a different rhythm. People have more freedom to step away from things, to slow down, and to decide whether they want to participate or not. That creates space for reflection and for developing ideas over a longer period of time.

At the same time, I don't think either approach is ideal on its own. Korea's speed and practicality can be inspiring, while Germany's careful and critical approach is something I deeply appreciate. Today, I'm more interested in finding a balance between those perspectives than choosing one over the other. You have lived and worked in several cities, including Amsterdam and Seoul. Do you think the energy and community of Berlin played a decisive role in the creation of LOOM?
LOOM happened partly by accident, simply because I was living in Berlin at the time. But the desire to create a space of my own had been with me for a long time.

What Berlin offered was the possibility to develop my own work and create a space where different experiences, ideas, and people could come together. The city also introduced me to new influences beyond graphic design, especially performance, choreography, and embodied forms of artistic practice.

Equally important is the community. Berlin makes it easy to encounter people from different disciplines. Those exchanges have greatly influenced how LOOM evolved.

On Working Between Design and Art

Your work moves fluidly between design and art. How do you navigate that space in between, and how do the two inform one another in your practice?
I don't really like to separate the two completely. My background is in graphic design, and for a long time I approached exhibitions almost as commissioned projects. The curator could be the client, and the exhibition itself could become the framework I responded to.

Over time, however, I started asking myself what would happen if I created work for myself rather than for someone else. Design is often described as a service-oriented practice, and although that's a simplification, I became interested in what it would mean to be my own client and develop a body of work based on my own questions and interests.

Even today, many projects that appear to be commissions are opportunities to continue investigations I am already interested in. I use them as platforms for developing my existing questions rather than finding solutions for clients.

At the same time, I still feel slightly uncomfortable calling myself an artist. The word carries certain expectations. Design remains important to me because it provides a framework for communication, structure, and production, while many of the questions I explore today revolve around experience, time, memory, and perception.
Rather than choosing one side, I'm interested in moving between them. I think of my work as an artistic practice using graphic design as a tool. Your early interest in graphic design was shaped by German visual culture and later by Dutch design education. How have those influences evolved, and what inspires your work today?
When I first started studying graphic design in Seoul, I was strongly drawn to German visual culture and typography. I was fascinated by its clarity and structure—the visual language of signage, typography, and graphic systems. Everything felt highly systematic and precise.

Later, studying in the Netherlands introduced me not only to a different visual approach but also to a different way of thinking about design. The practicality, efficiency, and economy behind design decisions became very important to me.

Today, I'm inspired less by individual designers or artists than by the ways different disciplines intersect with everyday life. I'm interested in how people move through space, experience time, and how cultural practices shape our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Living in Berlin has been particularly enriching in that regard, exposing me to a wide range of cultural and social perspectives.

On Collecting, Memory, and Design Practice

Collecting seems to be at the heart of your practice. What draws you to certain objects, and how do these discoveries later become part of your work?
I think collecting has been part of my life without recognizing it, probably since childhood. The more I think about it, the more I feel that everyone is a collector in some way, even if they don't realize it.

For me, it often begins in very ordinary situations. I'm drawn to simple visual languages—stickers, packaging, printed materials, pieces of paper, or other things people might easily overlook. At first, I collected these materials because of their graphic qualities. Later, I realized that every object carries the memory of a specific place, time, or situation. In that sense, I'm not only collecting objects, but also gaining experiences along the way.

Many of these materials eventually find their way into an ongoing project of mine called Found Composition. Using stickers, printed matter, and found objects, I create new compositions through a process of arranging, attaching, detaching, and cutting. It's almost meditative. I usually don't begin with a fixed image in mind; I work with the materials until a composition feels complete.

Looking Ahead

Finally, what's next for LOOM and your practice?
As always, I have many ideas. I'm full of curiosity, and a lot depends on whether an idea is ready to be realized or still needs time to mature.

With LOOM, I don't have a fixed destination in mind. What matters is continuing the process, staying curious, and seeing how it evolves through new encounters and collaborations. One thing I'd particularly like to continue exploring is the exchange that happens after each session, when visitors share their experiences and unexpected observations. I'm also increasingly interested in what kinds of experiences can emerge through extended formats, including screenings, listening sessions, sharing food, and workshops with the community.

  Alongside these questions of time and experience, I'm also thinking a lot about de-archiving. How can materials be reused, transformed, recycled, or even allowed to disappear? Rather than constantly producing something new, I'm interested in how existing things can take on new meanings and continue to circulate.

Interview & Concept: Leslie Klatte, Sohee Shin
German Translation: Leslie Klatte
Korean Translation: Sohee Shin