Studiokyss

The beautiful yet functional objects of Kenny (Yong-soo) Son of Studiokyss

For Sydney-based object designer Kenny (Yong-soo) Son of Studiokyss, a sensitivity to form and familiarity of materials help him to create beautiful yet meaningful objects.

Kenny (Yong-soo) Son is a Sydney-based object designer whose Studiokyss (an acronym of his name) was launched in 2013. For Son, object design involves the creation of a physical thing that can “interact with people and its surroundings, often involving the idea of functionality.” His work revolves around tableware, deskware and dinnerware, and his intention is to create “objects with a specific place and role in this world.” Care and intimacy are guiding principles that allow him to craft objects of “beauty, use and longevity.”

Born in South Korea in 1987, Son moved to Australia with his family in 1996. Initially trained as a jeweller and metalsmith, he says he was “always more intrigued by slightly larger scale objects” that had a “strong backbone of traditional jewellery and metal craft techniques.” His work has been exhibited in both his country of birth and Australia. “The experience and opportunity of having exhibited in Korea was important for me,” he explains. Although mostly educated in Australia, with degrees from Sydney College of the Arts and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Son says, “Korea is my blood and a big part of my post-education training was based in Korea and from a Korean metal craft master.”

Son is referring to Sung-joon Cho and a six-month mentorship program he undertook after completing his masters in design at UTS in 2013. Son describes this experience as “the most important period of my emerging practice.” Exhibiting his work cross-culturally has also promoted reflection on his practice. “In general, my work is better received within cultural hubs with an artistic or a cultural freedom than in cultures with a stronger focus on commercial-commodity.”

This point strikes at the heart of what Son creates and the value his practice places on the need for emotional value and purpose in everyday objects. Without these dual values, Son believes an object becomes “purely another thing born into this world with no purpose and no ability to interact.” Such objects are prone to “get thrown away or hidden on a closed shelf, lifeless.”

Son’s relationship to his craft is changing as well. “I work less and less with concrete as I have come to realize the impact it has in this world, because it is a material that cannot be recycled or re-used,” he says in reaction to his earlier work. “Metal is a different story. It is also something that I know best. I have, over the years, come to understand

the characteristics of all types of metal.” This familiarity, Son says, makes it easy for him “to work with and also realize its potential. Without this careful understanding, your ideas become limited to creating just the most simple structures or form with the specific metal.”

Son’s familiarity with materials and sensitivity to form and the beauty of meaningful result in remarkable works. He finds harmony in the decorative and functional nature of objects, with full knowledge that these are states that are often in tension. Son speaks of the importance of “getting the balance right.” But more profoundly, he points out that “whether machine-made or handmade, everything is crafted,” and even metal, when well crafted, can “provide a sense of softness.” If an object can enhance even the most regular of rituals, then “a special kind of value” has been created.

Son describes himself as “a nomadic practitioner,” travelling through workshops via residency programs. A recent and especially fruitful collaboration was with Hendrik Forster on The Teapot Project at Melbourne’s Modern Times, which began with a visit to Forster in his workshop in Calulu, Victoria. The project brought together two artists of, in Son’s words, “different cultural era[s] and personalities” who shared a deep understanding that what was being created, and the collaborative journey itself, “was far more than just the teapots.” The result was thirty individual handmade teapots that combined patinaed copper, acrylic, twenty-four-carat gold and red gum in different variations.

“My practice relates to the idea of using and owning something that will perhaps last a lifetime or even beyond to the next generation,” Son says. This does not mean creating objects that “stand out shouting, ‘Hey, look at me!’” Instead, it means “creating just enough of something” so that “a daily ritual [like making tea] can be enhanced.” This helps to explain what is special about the objectsson creates. A

The third and final show of The Teapot Project will run at Craft ACT in Canberra until 14 December 2019.

Photography — Youmee Jeon Right — Designer Kenny (Yong-soo) Son of Studiokyss.

Above — Son’s goal is to create objects that have life and the ability to interact with people and their surroundings.

Top — Son’s craftsmanship with metal, evident in a tea canister, confers a sense of softness onto a material that is often seen as hard.

Top — A collaboration between Son and furniture designer Tom Fereday, this brass dining table with timber top incorporates a vase in its centre. Photography: Fiona Susanto.

Above — Son manages to marry the often contradictory qualities of beauty and function in objects such as a brass school bell.

Above — Simple, faceted brass vases are typical of Son’s work; he wants his objects to enhance daily rituals and last a lifetime or longer.

Top — The Teapot Project at Melbourne’s Modern Times was a collaboration between Son and master gold and silversmith Hendrik Forster.

Above — Bringing together two artists from different cultural and generational backgrounds, The Teapot Project was about “far more than just the teapots.”