You robot me.
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Super Awesome Chanel Make Up Campaign for year 2011 ever since the first Prada robot key chain how many years ago…? I personally have the one in the middle below but lost certain parts of it… ( Emi please get on it and fix it for me!)
And…This is ” Love Robot” I got from Emi and Gael for this year’s Valentine day.
Then there was ” Grande” McQueen’s year 1999 robot sprayed dress. Are you all going to see Andrew Bolton curated Alexander McQueen exhibition at Met ? It runs through July 31st.
Then also there was Bjork’s ” All is Full of Love”
And Michel Gondry and Bjork’s Paint Piano. My favorite Youtube clip. Not really a robot but I do think this is robot related as mechanical function of it all.
Toyota’s Robot Violinist. CRAZY.
Then Sony’s Dancing Robots. Smooth.
OK, Enough now!
But
Go Future!
Sleep No more
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Main lobby of Mckittrick Hotel comes back to a life with “SLEEPNOMORE“, 530 west 27street between tenth and eleventh avenue, NYC
So Alex and Lara stopped by one night to pick up some hair product from Emi. It has been a while we all got together as everyone’s so busy with work. A glass of wine and some chatting felt so good. It’s always nice to have unexpected friends stopping by! Shortly before they headed back home, Alex talked about this interesting play, performance, dance sort of that interacts with you walking, touching, watching and browsing. ” Sleepnomore”
A quick history of the hotel here that I really don’t want to talk about it too much as YOU should be really GOING there and EXPERIENCE the whole thing and just get lost in the middle of all but I try to make it short as possible to share what this is all about at least a bit. Mckittrick Hotel was built back in 1939 to be the finest hotel that NY would ever have, then World War II had just started only 2 weeks before the opening date made Hotel never be able to open to the public till today. British theater company, PunchDrunk collaboration with Off Broadway company Emursive brings the hidden space in this long years of silence back to the life for this most intriguing and unique theatrical experience that you would ever have. Even in the city like New York.
The audience in simple yet modern and beautiful white masks freely walks around, follows the happenings, touches everything they wish, tries on, opens up, flips through and just “Be”. The hotel is completely and interestingly decorated for the play room by room and floor by floor that must have many original details of the hotel when it was built to open. Audience choose his or her own pace, path, spots and story lines of that moment what is happening in the hotel. You can even take a break if you wish. Each one of the audience becomes no one behind the mask yet is an absolutely most important part of this big play. Why? Because this theater and this play or performance whatever that is sssoooo need you to be there to physically follow after everything that is happening by interacting with all the details of this play down to the small prop.
Here are a few of my visual images to tell you what it all felt like. Myself behind that mask feeling somewhat safe from everything that was surrounding and happening then feeling somewhat naughty hiding my face from everyone, my mind was going through so many muses, tear sheets, dreams, films and stories, music and all. Mostly visually and attitude wise at least. Then there’s a surprising story line you will finally realize what this play was based on at the end!
First and definitely, I was in the movie of Stanley Kubrick,”EyesWide Shut”
then also I was maybe in one of HBO’s series, Carnivale!
then it also so much felt like the great “Great Gatsby “! Especially the costumes and general attitude of artists. Even this cover feels like ” Sleepnomore”!
Then there were also ” The others” moments…
Then the last supper in All versions…
How about Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express!
Then here we are with Shakespeare’s Macbeth! Or no?!!??
And…for the actual pictures of Sleep No more from NY Times’ review, Click on THIS.
Anyway, Go check it out yourself to know what it is all about!
It is a hell out of time you will have! One of the most stimulating things I have done in a long time…!
The City of Design, Copenhagen’s Best
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Zarahvoigt, Copenhagen
Eriko Makimura designed the coolest jewelries inspired by Klaus Nomi are sold at Zarahvoigt, Copenhagen.
It totally excites me to see these amazing jewelries inspired by Klaus Nomi who was a German countertenor who was known for his bizarrely visionary theatrical live performances, heavy make ups, unusual costumes and highly stylized hair do that crosses with his musical world and the style world of Electronics, Art Deco, Opera, New Wave, Baroque, Disco, Cynth pop and Experimental. I am sure many of you already know who Klaus Nomi was as he also sang with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live and done a few concerts. Anyway, either you love it or not, Klaus Nomi had his own strong color and voice in his style. And the designer and also a pianist Eriko Makimura had done a FAB job translating her muse Nomi to this super cool mini collection of Plexiglases jewelries. Take a look at a few pics from a killer cool custom jewelry shop, Zarahvoigt!
The shop carries also their fantastic and huge range of amazing custom designed jewelries made right in their studio in the back of the shop. If you are ever in Copenhagen, this is a must check out! If John Galiano didn’t say what he had to say about all that and still was with Christian Dior, and stopped by at this shop, you will see these jewelries at his next couture runway! I mean the range they have are magnificent!
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Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen
The main entrance to the wonderful Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
About half an hour car ride on a main highway from the Copenhagen downtown, Louisiana Museum of Art is located in Denmark on the North Zealand Coast, the spot maybe the one of the most sexiest points in the world looking out to the beautiful Baltic sea, where connects both Art and Architecture in such an open and natural way.
Louisiana Museum of Art pays a huge credit to MoMA in New York for it’s inspiration to broaden the concept of modern art to include architecture, design, photography and film. And Louisiana has hugely succeeded the total yet one solid concept to interact all of these in such a natural way. Beautiful sun light filled physical space again filled in highly intellectual art and designs including outdoor sculptures by such artists as Serra, Calder and Giacometti. My personal favorites!
Honestly visiting this museum was the highlight of the day for all of us and we definitely had a good kick out of visiting this beautiful artful space. The museum was running a special exhibition on Picasso as well , so it was an extra special visit for us.
Love how this pic turned out! It’s Picasso’s owl inside of a glass case in the exhibition juxtaposing the life size Picasso’s poster behind on the exhibition wall. A picture of Picasso working on this owl right here .
One of my favorite from the Picasso exhibition. Absolutely loving the colors here: black, grey, the perfect red, yellow and the cream mellows the yellow then crisp white that lifts the whole play on red and yellow. It’s titled as “Stills under the lamp”.
Near the museum’s cafe. Brick, wood, metal, glass and the nature. It becomes the one. Amazing views and natural light wrap you around wherever you are in the museum.
An open yet super cozy cafe with a million dollar view to the Baltic Ocean. The Fire place rocks.
Back inside at kid’s workshop room.
Now at the museum shop right by the entrance. Even though Louisiana started the concept based on MoMA, I must say the Louisiana shop product is much better in general and more integrated to everyday life. Functional.
By the way neon orange, or some sort of fiery orange is everywhere in Copenhagen. More colors below.
One more last look at good old beautiful oil paintings by Danish painter, Harald Giersing.
Viva Louisiana! LOvE ArT! LOvE it aLL!
Entrance to F.I.T, NYC. Going up to the Board room to judge the best talents in Design schools around the Nation.
I have met Joe Medved a while ago. A nice and much approachable man who had founded Joe’s Blackbook, a fine recruitment and consulting firm in the creative, retail, luxury goods as well as fragrance and beauty industry. I always felt a bit different quality in Joe from any other headhunters in other recruitment companies. Definitely hip, more human and genuine yet also much much professional.
And I got a nice email from him not long ago inviting me to be the one of judges to vote the best talent in the US’ top design schools in Women’s and Men’s wear design to win the very first Joe’s Blackbook Scholoship, an impressive amount of $10,000 for each winner and two winners will be collaborating a line of product with NYC based Men’s wear designer, UNIS to be sold at hip and much happening ACE Hotel exclusively. The participating schools are as follow: FIT, Parsons, Academy of Art, Otis, California College of the Arts, RISD, Philadelphia University, University of Cincinnati, Kent State University, SCAD and CCAD.
It has been so many years that I have come to visit my own school, FIT. The buildings are the same as since I had graduated back in 1997! The dorm building are the same and the same trees… I guess the only change will be the new talents and new restless blood dreaming for the next best in Art and Design! Ahhh, It’s an exiting and beautiful thing to throw yourself at what you do and what you love with your talent that God gave you. Especially during the school years. Somehow it’s more pure and fearless. You may lack a bit of fine tuning but you are all the way out there not thinking of any commercialism which is the biggest and hardest wall you will hit when you step into the real battles after the school! Anyway, walking in to the C building lobby of FIT, so many flash backs are going through my mind and bit excite about over 120 portfolio submissions that I will look through!
Faculty Board room at FIT. Judges are flowing in. All the professional designers to Fashion forecasters of prominent US brands such as Gap (myself), TSE, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo Ralph Lauren, DVF, J.Crew, Donna Karen and many more. I believe there are about 15-20 judges in and out of this voting process. It took me about 3 1/2 hours to go through all the work to score, comment and also to rank the top 7 young student designers out of over 100.
Kids are just fine. Kids are superb. Kids are great! Kids blew my mind in some cases. Certain schools definitely stood out. They are even quite professional in terms of presentation and even down to the building a mini collection. Strong separates and new shapes. Colors and all. I saw a new generation and new voices in couture’s world as well. Each project follows certain format in their own creative way. A typed up muse and concept. A mood board/ page to go with. Inspiration pics, fabric or whatever that is. The illustration of collection, Flats, Color stories, even a working sketchbook: by the way my favorite part of all! These kids were already selected by each school before they made to this point. So this compettion is actually really big if you think about.
There will be couple more rounds of judging by different professionals. So what I did was the first round with other designers. I believe most of them are at Director levels. Then second round with Recruiters of the employers and Joe was planning to present the work by the school level, which I thought was brilliant! Then there will be 6 finals to be boiled down to the 2 winners! The reception will happen at Ace hotel in March I believe and I will be surely there to celebrate and embrace the top 2 talents of this young generation!
Me and Joe!
Joe, I like to say how wonderful event you had put together. You are not competing at this point. You are leading the entire recruiting industry by doing this meaningful Scholarship project. You connected all the schools and had them got into a healthy competition and You had connected professionals in the industry. You are developing and finding the newest talents and supporting them. You went out on to the most right people and the right place to do this wonderful project. Thank you so much for the great opportunity for me to give back and a Huge Congratulation to your Very first Scholarship Program event!
Joe, You are Rocking the Fashion Industry! Cheers!
W Hotel, Austin Road, Hong Kong
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Moving Digital art by Jennifer Steinkamp, USA: “Rapunzel 9″ greets you at the reception. I absolutely LOVE this. I would call it ” Underwater creatures’ Fire works”. It’s very Avatar and Christopher Kane. Love Love Love and I want it!
6th floor Reception.
Lounge at night. I am never into trendy hotels. Or trendy wanna bes with lousy and loud pumping music and cheap decor and all. Especially when it’s a business trip. You just can’t rest. It’s too much. If you even hear all that noise rising to your room, then it’s the worst. But I must admit I really enjoyed staying at W HK on Austin road this trip. Quiet quiet rooms and well pulled off modern and quirky decors. It’s modern and fun in a nice way. And W HK can cook!!
Another great design I really dig. The lamps at the bar on the 6th floor. Illuminating Sting Rays? yeah I think so. It makes a beautiful scene either that is day or night!
20th floor elevator area. It’s a modern day “Alice in Wonderland”
Digital room number book. Built with lighting system indicating need cleaning or not to maids.
“Kitchen” entrance. Beautiful harbor view is impressive in the morning. And the food is excellent here at kitchen. It serves Breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet of fine international cuisine including fresh sashimi and huge selection of baked goodsAnd beautiful decor.
On going floor to ceiling big glass windows along the entire restaurant are absolutely beautiful. And it’s a different take on the view of HK. The Harbor view without the skyline of HK main island and I love it. Especially in the morning the industrial mega size boats look almost shrine and peaceful. It has edge vibe.
Loving the beautiful chairs. Deep red adds a great accent through out the floor.
The wonderful ” Kitchen”! Filled with all the delicious hearty food with comfortable style. It’s beautiful and Not intimidating. Fresh smoothie, juices in farm style bottles, a huge range of baked goods and Japanese and Chinese cuisine and so much more. I think the best thing about this Kitchen is the nice and open layout with a style that feels like you are in your good friend’s house who has a lovely lovely kitchen. It’s inviting and cozy. It’s relevant to today and I love it!
Wonderful Pastry Bar. Home made Jams, Honey, bread, bagels more more more…
The favorite part of the Kitchen: The Communal table with the fantastic Show case filled with stacks and stacks of plates, bowls and ceramic cats. Ahhh, It’s so great! The surreal beauty!
I love everything is being stacked in this kitchen. The luxury of having it all. The luxury of all that space you want and you fill it up! It’s so satisfying. I envy it.
For your next HK trip Check out and Check in at W HK on Austin Road!
So , Emiliano has been talking about EX -Voto arts during our trip and we were hoping to come across a couple really interesting ones from early of the century. What is EX Voto? Regardless it’s various forms, EX Voto is votive offering to Saint or Divinity. EX Voto is placed in churches or chapels where the worshippers seek grace or wishes to give thanks. Thanks to small to big everyday events in your lives. Ex-votos can take a wide variety of forms. They are not only intended for the helping figure, but also as a testimony to later visitors of the received help. As such they may include texts explaining a miracle attributed to the helper, or symbols such as a painted or modelled reproduction of a miraculously healed body part. I believe Egypt is one place where you can still find quite a bit of many very old Ex-voto arts or even France, Italy and of course Mexico! We have visited a few antique shops and flea markets looking for a few good examples of EX-voto arts. There were many re productions honestly but saw a few interesting original ones. Especially if you go on line, there are many art dealers these days selling the ones from the early 1900’s to quite recent ones.
As you can see, read ( if you know the Spanish!) or at least imagine, People will draw, paint and write about what had happened and what they are thankful about. They are all done in such naive and humble manners and styles of drawing and painting that often it makes me think that they were done by children not by adult. But then it may be true that some of them were done by actually children. The subjects are vary from a woman somehow survived from violence, a family survived from a car accident, a man may have seen a alien, a couple thanking for their engagement. Thankful events have no boundaries. They are quite cute and adorable regardless how serious the subject is. I love them! All the writing underneath the art usually describes what had happened and what they are thanking for.
Here’s church covered in EX-voto art.
Autumn in New York : Patrick Dougherty’s Natural History.
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Japan Garden at Brooklyn Botanical Garden: I totally had Monet moment here…! All the beautiful leaves…
Ahhh, It was a beautiful sunny autumn day to stroll around Brooklyn. We had visited Brooklyn Botanical garden to check out an artist, Patrick Dougherty and his work, “Natural History“: a first site specific art project that was done for Brooklyn Botanical Garden for garden’s 100 year anniversary, an amazing stick work that Dougherty had done for 3 weeks time period back in August this year. It’s a beautiful work and I’m just about to share some pics and my thoughts with you, but also please enjoy the peak of beautiful autumn in right here in Brooklyn, NY! It is almost a privilege to be able to see seasonal changes of the mother nature around us in a big city like NY. Gorgeous Autumn light and colors…
Patrick Dougherty’s woven-wood sculpture in honor of Brooklyn Botanical garden’s centennial.
The woody materials come from Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island. The harvest site was chosen of garden’s director of Science because of its proximity to the Garden and it’s large population of nonnative willow, which is designated an invasive species in New York State. The exhibition will run for a full year.
Weaving, snagging and flexing sticks into nest-like architectural forms evoke themes of shelter, habitat and sustainability. Created of organic matter, Dougherty’s works have a natural life cycle that changes over the time as the sticks settle and decay, eventually returning to the earth where they came from…
The sculpture gives you endless possibilities of new shapes and angles. Honestly, I felt like I could stay at the site forever. It was hard to leave. Look up, look down, go in, come out, follow the surface in circle… I kept feeling like my hair will start swirling with curved sticks. I can’t pinpoint out what exactly it is but it almost gave me a bit of butterflies in my stomach. I felt like I was a little kid and envied and imagined what if I had such a thing in our massive garden….
Gael mingled with bunch of excite kids for a while… If you only had a furry costume on, it could instantly turn into “Where the wild things are…”
Here we have a book purchased at Storm King Art Center: ” Natural Architecture“, The cover work is by Patrick Dougherty.
The Artist above and more shots from the Garden…
Get out there and Embrace this beautiful Autumn!
Back to Heyri Art Valley, Korea: It’s family time!
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This trip is coming to an end and actually I am not feeling so great, so staying at Aunt’s home for a day with family feels priceless. Aunt and uncle have been living in Heyri Art Valley now for a few years and I think that is so great and am very happy for them to have such a beautiful living space in this artistic community sharing all the creative thoughts and life style. So excite to have really hearty good home food after the 2 weeks of trip on the road!!
A fine artist ( oil painting and pottery), story teller, farmer, amazing organic home cook and my aunt chopping and cooking. These leaves( Sorry, I do not recall what this was at all! Aunt had used maybe good 10 different kind of herbs and some kind of leaves from her garden to cook with) are going into her steamed rice with shitake mushrooms.
Sauteed home grown squash: Cut them in chunks and start them with olive oil in a hot wok, garlic, fresh red chili chunks, salt cured baby shrimps… And Mom helping!
Oven broiled herring; Aunt poured over soy sauce with chopped green scallion right before serving it and below is quickly blenched calamaris on the bed of fresh baby sesame leaves and mixed green from aunt’s garden. You dip them in the vinegary chili sauce. Delicious!
Dinner table is coming together! Sliced cucumber dressed in chili paste and vinegar, baby radish kim chi, mountain vegies steamed and dressed in sesame seeds, garlic, onion, olive oil…
Yeah, dinner is on the table! Steamed vegie rice, Kim chi soup, calamari, more kim chi Broiled herring, steamed squash leaves for ” ssam: wrap”, and many more. And a glass of red… Happy Happy! Cousin Yoonhee on the left and her hubby, Sanghun back in the kitchen area. That was the most amazing Korean food in a long time! We chatted, laughed and ate again and again. It was so nice to have everyone together in one place and enjoyed each others…!
The next morning after another big morning meal ( ha!), Aunt, Mom and I went out for a stroll around the Art Valley. There were quite a few exhibitions including a famous Korean singer, Jo Young Nam’s Solo exhibition at ” Hangil Gallery” right by the Aunt’s place.
These plastic pieces with design are called ” Wha-To”: pretty much Korean ‘Cards”, like Poker in a sense. The artist had used wha-to in such a clever way. Wha-To is such a gamble that is beloved by entire nation for a longest time and also a national issue since people over do this down to loose their homes and family. Some people get so addict to this… like any other gambles out there.
Oh The Artist loves, the poet ‘ Lee Sang’..!
And again, the whole culture of architecture in Heyri Art Valley is quite innovative. Every building in the valley needs to be consist of using Metal, Glass, Wood , Rocks and Concrete as main materials with no pointy roof and painted exterior. It sounds bit limiting yet also it harmonizes the valley as a whole and also I believe it pushes the architects to be creative in different area such as shape, light and space.
The ” Book House”, a book store above the Hangil Gallery.
Underground level of Moa Gallery is just as bright as or even brighter than any spaces on the ground level. Smart usage of minimum amount of glass panel allows to have maxim effect of enough natural light for the space.
Outside of “Ssamji” galley and below: the stair case to the gallery space.
4 very different Rooms to crash for rent with organic cooking classes and a small roof garden growing greens then 2 gallery spaces: all with peaceful hearty and artsy farming and nature in mind. It’s called ” Field Art School” ( Non Baat Art School). They are not just fully opened yet. The rooms are available for rent already though. Below, the cooking class schedule.
The cooking class room and dining room.
The outdoor lounge: a part of lobby/cafe’ they are building. We have the same lamp in our kitchen!
Cool outdoor passage way. The natural wall-field I like to call it. Love it!
The roof top green garden.
One of the 4 room to rent. Each room is completely different in sizes and layouts. 4 different artists were hired to design each room.
Above and below: 2 gallery spaces and Mom and Aunt…
By the way, I picked out this book ” Seoul, have you ever been places like this? 100 spots you want to check out!” at Hangil Book House. (Aunt’s treat) This book excites me so much!! Beautiful pics and interesting places!
It’s so interesting to me to see all these great movement and ideas at Heyri. Ideas to be closer to the nature in style and a peace in your mind, I feel everything here feels modern yet peaceful but not trendy or fast. Maybe forward and ahead but not fast.
Hopefully Heyri Art Valley will be always the leader of the pack showcasing what you can do with your finance and ideas. A forward thinking that is good for your body and soul!
VivA, HeYri!!!!!
The Deer House, 2010 Next Wave Festival, BAM
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I’m So torn that I am NOT going to go see this piece, ”The Deer House” at BAM ( premiers on October 5). I’ll be out of the town… for the entire period while this piece is showing. The Next Wave Festival every year at BAM always brings something intriguing. And for this year, ” The Deer House” will be that intriguing piece to me. By the way Vollmondo ( Full Moon) , the modern dance piece by Pina Bausch ( with all my respect for her) also looks quite amazing. The short clip of the Deer House shows already enough of intensity of this piece in great amount of mad beautiful costumes very much inspired by Matthew Barney’s works ( actually maybe TOO much inspired and not sophisticated enough as Barney’s that is disappointing in a way I have to say). I would love to go see this show so I can properly review the piece but anyhow seeing it from the video clip and reading what is all about, it sounds quite interesting. So if anyone of you go see it, drop me an e-mail like you always do.
Here I collected a few of what main inspiration of the Deer House may have come from (apart from the story) : watch Matthew Barney’s cremaster . And below a few pic of Matthew Barney’s work. I mean how much he had inspired this world we all live in. Genius!
“A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn’t have an ego when it’s wanting to throw up. It just does it.”
– Matthew Barney.
All the eyes are on me.
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Today at Fort Greene Flea, We totally scored 11 of these loose doll eyes. How freaking awesome!!
Head starts moving heart starts pumping. Wooooo Feeling Sssso itch to have some D.I.Y time with these cool eyes. Yes they blink and all. The best part of it!
Thought of a ring. Thought of a Necklace. Thought of an abstract collage painting sort of thing. Thought of a pin. Thought of a tee shirt. Thought of so many possibilities.
I’ll definitely share a pic of whatever that will be done with these lovely eyes!