It is on the day one year ago that I wrote about the book fair in Leipzig and also this year I saw a bunch of in­spir­ing books there – con­tent-wise as well as re­gard­ing the de­sign and pro­duc­tion.  I spent hours ad­mir­ing the nom­i­nees and win­ners of the yearly award »Best Book De­sign From All Over The World« and the pre­sen­ta­tions of the stu­dents of dif­fer­ent Ger­man book art study pro­grammes, find some im­pres­sions in the pic­tures. An­other high­light was the Ko­rean Pavil­lon – every sin­gle book here could have won the best book award, in my opin­ion!
I con­cluded my week­end in Leipzig with a visit to »It’s a book, it’s a stage, it’s a pub­lic space«,  a meet­ing of small in­de­pen­dent pub­lish­ers, where I met friends who pre­sented their cool pro­ject »Pub­lish­ing as (part time) prac­tice«. Check it out here, I heard they will come to Berlin with it, soon.

Örns­bergsauk­tio­nen is the name of an artist op­er­ated auc­tion house for stu­dio pro­duced, in­de­pen­dent de­sign and craft. Its cre­ators, Fredrik Paulsen, Simon Klenell and Kristof­fer Sundin, were miss­ing a plat­form for con­tem­po­rary, unique de­sign in Stock­holm so they ini­ti­ated the first Örns­bergsauk­tio­nen dur­ing Stock­holm De­sign Week 2012. The idea of the auc­tion is to open up the process be­tween idea and fin­ished prod­uct and to re­duce the dis­tance be­tween de­signer and client. Now time has come for the sec­ond edi­tion – until Feb­ru­ary, 8th you can check out and bid on a range of beau­ti­ful and some­what crazy ob­jects, by­pass­ing the com­mer­cial de­mands of mass pro­duc­tion!

Sculp­ture by Sara Lund­kvist | Glasses by Silo Stu­dio |  Tray by Au­gust Sören­son | Neck­lace by Maria E Har­rysson

Im­ages: Vik­tor Sjödin

What started out al­ready in 1966 as a com­pe­ti­tion for the best posters in the GDR has be­come a dear re­cur­ring event: The ex­hi­bi­tion »Die 100 besten Plakate des Jahres« (100 Best Posters of the Year) is once more on dis­play at Kul­tur­fo­rum at Pots­damer Platz. 53 posters from Ger­many, 45 from Switzer­land and 2 from Aus­tria were awarded for their out­stand­ing de­sign, whereof 23 of the prize-win­ning en­tries are posters de­signed by stu­dents.
We were great fans of the posters by the fol­low­ing de­sign­ers: Paula Trox­ler for a Moby Dick the­ater play, Va­le­ria Gordeew for a masked ball at Udk Berlin, Mark­wald & Neusitzer for an ex­hi­bi­tion of is­landic artist erró, Björn-Chris­t­ian Schiebe for the Mu­seum of Nat­ural Sci­ences.
Have a look at all win­ning posters here or check other dates of the trav­el­ling ex­hi­bi­tion.

We went out to see Sarah Il­len­berg­ers ex­hi­bi­tion at voo store in Kreuzberg. Some of the ex­hibits ap­par­ently were done just at the same day but a lot of her work was fa­mil­iar. Nev­er­the­less it was nice to see some of the orig­i­nals and the beet­root di­a­monds, the pome­gran­ate and the blonde apple just made us smile!

Under this motto, the on­line art show »Buy Some Damn Art« every week brings a new hand-picked se­lec­tion of in­de­pen­dent orig­i­nal art di­rectly to buy­ers. The ini­tia­tor of the site, Kate Sin­gle­ton, wants to offer art at af­ford­able prices for a new gen­er­a­tion of art buy­ers. Since the be­gin­ning of No­vem­ber, each Tues­day at noon a new show launches fea­tur­ing six orig­i­nals for sale from $200 to $500.

This week it is Rachel Sitkin’s turn. Her land­scape paint­ings quite un­ex­pect­edly show sur­face coal and cop­per mines in West Vir­ginia and Ari­zona.

As usual, the weather was great at the Berlin de­sign ex­hi­bi­tion DMY 2011. The ex­hibit­ing de­sign­ers were in­spired by na­ture, raw ma­te­ri­als like wood, wool, hemp and con­crete and sus­tain­abil­ity can no longer be con­sid­ered as a »trend«, it is a mind­set that is here to stay. You don’t see very much of this in my pic­tures, though, my day ap­par­ently was more about colours and funny an­i­mals…

This was long over­due: Berlin-based pub­lish­ing house Gestal­ten fi­nally opened a shop/ex­hi­bi­tion space! But the wait­ing was worth the while: Sit­u­ated in So­phie-Gips-Höfe in Mitte, »Gestal­ten Space« spreads over more than 300 square me­tres and of­fers all the great books by Gestal­ten, cov­er­ing every­thing rel­e­vant in the in­ter­na­tional de­sign scene. Be­sides, you can buy se­lected prod­ucts by de­sign­ers & artists who have been pre­vi­ously pub­lished by Gestal­ten. The gallery space is in­auger­ated with the ex­hi­bi­tion »Cut­ters Edges« dis­play­ing con­tem­po­rary col­lages by 50 in­ter­na­tional artists.

I didn’t see the Gre­gory Crewd­son ex­hibit in Ger­many (it’s not so often I visit Baden-Baden…) but when I en­tered Stock­holm’s Kul-turhuset this week­end I was lucky to dis­cover that they had a big Gre­gory Crewd­son show on dis­play. Es­pe­cially the im­ages in his pre­cisely chore­o­graphed and elab­o­rately staged “Be­neath the Roses” se­ries were im­pres­sive. Ad­di­tional im­ages from the pro­duc­tion process pro­vided an in­sight into how much plan­ning and or­ches­tra­tion is needed to achieve the final re­sults.

This week­end, I vis­ited the book fair in Leipzig. Be­sides pre­sent­ing an over­whelm­ing amount of lit­er­ary nov­el­ties, the fair is also ded­i­cated to book art. At the yearly ex­hi­bi­tion »Best Book De­sign From All Over The World« arranged by Stiftung Buchkunst you can ad­mire re­ally beau­ti­ful books. Great lay­out, fan­tas­tic ma­te­r­ial choices (es­pe­cially the Asian peo­ple know how to work with paper), so­phis­ti­cated bind­ings and other extra de­tails lifted my spir­its. 14 books were re­warded, check out the win­ners here!

Funny elec­tric­ity, se­ri­ally num­bered doors and beau­ti­ful floors: we´ll miss all that when c/o Fo­to­ga­lerie has to move out of Post­fuhramt and the place gets trans­formed into an­other shop­ping mall! Until the 27th of March you have the chance to see their last ex­hi­bi­tion there, a Robert Map­plethorpe Ret­ro­spec­tive.

Se­ries are ap­peal­ing to me: You start ob­serv­ing your en­vi­ron­ment in a new way when you are on to some­thing, you dis­cover pat­terns and you can col­lect – ob­jects, pho­tos, texts. So it is not sur­pris­ing that I en­joyed the ex­hi­bi­tion »In love, to:« by AFF Ar­chi­tects at DAZ. It is part of a se­ries with three up-and-com­ing ar­chi­tect stu­dios telling us about their in­spi­ra­tion, de­sign processes and method­ol­ogy – their »For­mula X«, quite sim­ply. AFF’s for­mula is in­flu­enced by ob­jects and im­ages from their past and pre­sent, things they love and like to sur­round them­selves with.

The ex­hi­bi­tion »Welt aus Schrift« (trans­lated as “World as Words”) at Kul­tur­fo­rum on Pots­damer Platz takes you on a jour­ney through the de­vel­op­ment of ty­pog­ra­phy dur­ing the 20th cen­tury. Posters, books, mag­a­zines, in­vi­ta­tions, sta­tionery, restau­rant menues, shop signs… there are so many places where ty­pog­ra­phy be­comes a part of our every day life. Here more than 600 of such ex­am­ples are on dis­play which out­stand­ingly rep­re­sent the style of their time and rev­o­lu­tion­ary turn­ing points. A lot of in­ter­est­ing de­tails are to be ex­plored and in­spir­ing styles to be found and it is amaz­ing that many de­signs still feel very mod­ern. For all of you that can­not come to Berlin until the 16th of Jan­u­ary, there is a cat­a­logue which in­cludes al­most all ex­hibits as well as some deep­en­ing es­says.

I spent a day at the New Mu­seum this win­ter. There is so much on dis­play that you eas­ily feel over­whelmed, so I found it help­ful to con­cen­trate on some beastly charm­ing de­tails…
By the way, there was no queue time at all, every­thing seemed back to nor­mal after David Chip­per­field’s much talked-about re­mod­el­ing of the build­ing.

Thank you every­one for spend­ing a cosy sun­day af­ter­noon with us!

This sun­day we´ll cel­e­brate  a re­laxed ad­vent af­ter­noon with an ex­hi­bi­tion in our of­fice. Work of the fol­low­ing artists will be ex­hib­ited:
Casey McG­o­na­gle
Benne Ochs
Franziska Sinn
Chelsee Ivan
Jeff Luker
Irina Ro­zovsky
Lars Borges
De­laney Allen

The mu­seum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden com­bines the two amer­i­can artists Duane Han­son and Gre­gory Crewd­son in the ex­hi­bi­tion »Un­heim­liche Wirk­lichkeiten«. Each in his own media, they deal with re­al­ity in an ir­ri­tat­ing way: Crewd­son cre­ates elab­o­rate sets in which he freezes weird mo­ments of pseudo-re­al­ity and Han­son builds hy­per­re­al­is­tic life-sized clothed fiber­glass fig­ures. Might be an in­ter­est­ing com­bi­na­tion, there is time until the 6th of march 2011 to find out.

You don’t al­ways have to choose the sunny South to get a re­ward­ing break from Berlin’s No­vem­ber rain. Last week­end I went to Helsinki and once more the city and its friendly in­hab­i­tants took me by storm. You get the Scan­di­na­vian feel but com­bined with an East­ern twist. The city’s ar­chi­tec­ture varies from cozy wooden sub­urbs to mon­u­men­tal so­viet style build­ings. Helsinki also of­fers great shop­ping with loads of de­sign, both new and vin­tage (check out the De­sign Dis­trict), un­for­tu­nately it was All Saints’ Day so we ended up with win­dow shop­ping only. It is very con­ve­nient that most of Helsinki’s sights and places of in­ter­est are within walk­ing dis­tance, so we con­tin­ued to the Ki­asma mu­seum to see an ex­hi­bi­tion with the works of Damien Hirst and his British con­tem­po­raries. But to be hon­est, the thing I al­most miss most when I leave Helsinki is the dark rye bread. You re­ally should try this and other tra­di­tional Finnish food at Sea Horse, a snug restau­rant with orig­i­nal wooden in­te­rior and wall paint­ings from the 1930s. Go for the real clas­sics like crispy fried Baltic her­rings or Scan­di­na­vian hash.
Hyvää ruoka­halua/Enjoy your meal!

When we vis­ited Tate Mod­ern in the be­gin­ning of this month, the mu­seum’s Tur­bine Hall was im­pres­sive, but empty. Now it is filled, namely with 100 mil­lion sun­flower seeds. They are part of an in­stal­la­tion by Chi­nese artist Ai Wei­wei and though they look re­al­is­tic are they in fact hand-crafted in porce­lain. 1600 work­ers in­di­vid­u­ally sculpted and painted every sin­gle seed husk in the Chi­nese city of Jingdezhen dur­ing the last two years. This gets your men­tal arith­metic going – to make a long cal­cu­la­tion short, the pro­duc­tion of Ai Wei­wei’s piece took about 6 mil­lion hours. This is quite a num­ber just as the mil­lions of seeds are a pow­er­ful sight. Even on a dis­tance Wei­wei’s in­stal­la­tion makes me  think about what role work plays in our lives, about the „Made in China” phe­nom­ena and in­di­vid­u­al­ism in a so­ci­ety like China. You are no longer al­lowed to walk on the seeds (this caused health-dam­ag­ing dust – here you got some­thing more to think about…), but any­how I would love to see the in­stal­la­tion in real.
Pho­tos: Tate Pho­tog­ra­phy, Johan Wirfält

As our hair­dresser moved to Lon­don we took the oc­ca­sion to fol­low her and get a hair­cut at Radio Hair Salon plus some in­spi­ra­tion. It was a great trip, apart from meet­ing our friends, high­lights were stay­ing nearly a day in Tate Mod­ern, af­ter­noon tea at the Na­tional Por­trait Gallery, Fish and chips at Rock and Sole Plaice. A visit at Fort­num & Mason was a must, not just for high qual­ity tea & marme­lade shop­ping but for en­joy­ing their beau­ti­ful pack­ag­ing.

Lars par­tic­i­pa­tion in the group ex­hi­bi­tion inter.​cool 3.0 at Ruhr 2010 led to a trip to the Ruhr re­gion. We went to the open­ing and at the fol­low­ing week­end we took in every­thing the Eu­ro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture had to offer. From  »A star is born – Pho­tog­ra­phy and rock since Elvis« at the mu­seum Folk­wang in Essen to the SANAA mu­seum show­ing all fa­mous Ruhr pho­tog­ra­phers from the Bech­ers to Gursky in one spec­tac­u­lar build­ing and the Zeche Zol­lverein in Essen it was a real cul­tural treat!