At Tina Kim Gallery, Jae Chung’s Design Legacy Lives On

Adam Charlap Hyman’s rapport with Tina Kim runs particularly deep. When the Korea-born gallerist and her husband purchased a Long Island beach house with personal ties to one of Charlap Hyman’s friends, she hired him to redo their children’s rooms while SO–IL tackled the broader renovation. It was Charlap Hyman’s first professional job after studying furniture design  and art history at the Rhode Island School of Design—and it connected the budding interior designer to his future business partner, Andre Herrero, who worked at SO–IL at the time. Kim then trusted Charlap Hyman to redesign the family’s storybook Upper West Side townhouse into a vivid showpiece for their impeccably curated trove of vintage furniture and blue-chip art. 

 

Such a high-profile project may easily overwhelm designers with less ambition and finesse, but Charlap Hyman rose to the occasion with consummate grace that belies his youthful age. “It was a sublime experience,” he tells Galerie of the formative learning opportunity, which he likens to an “intensive course” in design and curation. It also afforded him the chance to collaborate with Jaewoong Chung, Kim’s husband and the visionary founder of design firm Vintage20. Before he died following a short illness, in 2020, Chung was a world-respected authority on midcentury furniture and decorative arts, mounting museum-quality shows that introduced rare works by 20th-century luminaries like Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé to discerning new audiences, especially at the renowned Kukje Gallery in Seoul.

 

Since Chung’s death, Kim found herself contemplating ways to celebrate and memorialize her late husband’s vital work—and to honor the life and home they built together though art and design. As she conceived early ideas for an exhibition at her Chelsea gallery, Charlap Hyman immediately came to mind as a design-savvy partner with intimate knowledge of the family’s dynamic art collection who could dream up a show with deep personal resonance. The family’s continued mentorship and ongoing support has helped Charlap Hyman shape his fast-rising interiors firm, Charlap Hyman & Herrero, into a vanguard creator of wondrously layered spaces imbued with wit and nuance. He also curated three well-received exhibitions for her gallery in the past. “It was so natural,” Kim tells Galerie. “He knows my homes and collections.”

 

The exhibition they created, “Vintage20: Design for Living,” is a paean to the rich design legacy Chung left behind. “We immediately thought it would be interesting to set up the gallery in a way that suggested domestic spaces,” says Charlap Hyman, who drew inspiration from Vintage20’s most significant shows. The scenography unfolds in home-like vignettes—a living room, dining room, and study evocative of the poetically layered spaces Chung had a knack for creating—outfitted with eclectic works by acclaimed midcentury designers key to his program like George Nakashima, Le Corbusier, and Serge Mouille. Even the most seasoned aesthetes should expect new discoveries. “It’s not what you get to see every day when you open up any interior design magazine and there’s a Prouvé chair,” Charlap Hyman says. “He had many one-of-a-kind pieces that have a very interesting provenance. This is a chance to see some very special pieces acquired by serious collectors over the last 20 years.”

 

One gallery evoking a living room pairs a handsome Perriand daybed and Prouvé cocktail table outfitted with a swooping sheet metal maquette by Alexander Calder; its curves reverberate in a skeletal mahogany plywood chair by experimental Dutch designer Joris Laarman sitting nearby, lending a dash of futuristic intrigue. Backdropping the scene is an imposing Andy Warhol silkscreen depicting a hammer and sickle whose burnt orange beautifully contrasts the room’s historic French Deco rug. Another vignette conjures the cosmos thanks to a giant moon jar by Jane Yang D’Haene perched on a freeform Persian walnut bench by George Nakashima; a pair of hypnotic Calder gouaches behind serve as windows into another realm. “I was forced to think about the DNA of Jae’s rooms,” Charlap Hyman says of Chung’s nonpareil ability to pair rare works of vintage and collectible design with artwork in ways that feel organic and lived-in. “He had a particular sensibility for color and the ways that colors were put together.” 

 

Many vignettes also feature objects from the collections of Chung’s friends and colleagues, deepening the already uniquely personal touch. Kim invited them to contribute mementos that celebrate their relationships with him. One evocative moment faithfully recreates Chung’s study with the original objects he kept. It’s anchored by Prouvé’s striking African Congo Table (1952), an obscure piece defined by its rare aluminum top. “He was very excited when he acquired the table,” Kim says, recalling an effusive Chung teaching her about the engineering expertise of Prouvé’s furniture. “He was so excited about the engineering aspect of these architect-designed objects. He loved turning chairs upside down and looking at the bolts.” 

 

 

For Kim, the show also became an occasion to reflect on everything her late husband taught her about curation. In particular, she recalls a 2016 exhibition at Vintage20 that celebrated Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s legacy in Chandigarh, India, which she recently visited for the first time. Chung painted display walls the same vibrant shades of green, yellow, and red that distinguish the Capital Complex’s towering columns; they also feature rectangular apertures. “Somehow he was able to recreate that grand scale and feeling of massiveness in the gallery,” Kim says. “You felt like you were in this historical building.” That sensation also comes to life on the pages of Design for Living, a new book edited by Nick Herman that chronicles Vintage20’s exhibitions from 2005 until 2019 released concurrently with the show.

 

She and Charlap Hyman wielded that alchemy throughout “Design for Living” to conjure the essence of a loved one and cherished mentor through objects that continue to carry his spirit. “The show has this beautiful lightness,” Charlap Hyman says. “It brings together a bunch of people who knew Jae and has this nice connection to the open-endedness of the future.” 

 

—Ryan Waddoups

March 27, 2025