Dezeen and Wallpaper Showcase Jay Sae Jung Oh's Latest Works in Salon 94 Exhibition

Jay Sae Jung Oh, Salvage Series Wall Organizer, 2024. Image courtesy Salon 94 Design.

Salon 94 recently opened a new solo exhibition of Jay Sae Jung Oh’s (MFA 3D Design 2011) latest works, a new selection of her signature cord-wrapped functional sculptures, this time in leather. Salvage 2.0 | Domestic Landscape features multiple new works including seating, lighting, wall storage, and a planter.

Oh first explored this method during her time at the Academy. She took notice of gently used, but discarded items around campus and began collecting them. At the time she was considering the nature of design – and how she could make objects without adding to excessive waste. Classmates may joked about Oh’s studio itself becoming like a dumpster, but the items transformed by Oh’s hand – everyday trash being combined, crafted into intricate jute-wrapped sculptures that also were functional furniture.

Oh’s exhibition is paired with a complementary solo exhibition of Max Lamb’s works. Salon 94 founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn told Dezeen, “Max and Jay — though to different affect — rely on their hand, so every work is unique. Both insist on small footprints and economies. Jay’s forms are built out of other people’s defunct toys and plastics, and Max uses every off-cut — whether a hole cut from a marble slab that becomes a leg for a table, or every cut of wood that becomes part of a puzzle-piece chair.”

Glenn Adamson says of Oh’s process, “[her] process enacts a sort of reverse archaeology, gradually immuring objects within a mute topology, at once erasing and monumentalizing them. Withdrawn from view yet still more or less recognizable, they serve as stand-ins for things of their general type. In this way, Oh hoped to convey a simple message: with sufficient effort and imagination, rubbish can be redeemed — made not just useful, but drop-dead gorgeous.” Please read his detailed text on Jay Sae Jung Oh’s work on Salon 94 Design’s website.

Salvage 2.0 | Domestic Landscape is on view at Salon 94 Design in New York through April 20, 2024.

Oh’s Salvage Chair, an earlier iteration of the work at Salon 94 Design, was shortlisted in the furniture design category during Dezeen Awards 2023.

Learn more:

Hundreds of Max Lamb works shown with cord-covered objects by Jay Sae Jung Oh – Dezeen

Jay Sae Jung Oh’s leather-wrapped furniture is a meticulous meditation on consumerism – Wallpaper

Salvage 2.0 | Domestic Landscape – Salong 94 Design

3D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art