Olafur Eliassons Riverbed at Louisiana

When you sign up for a huge Olafur Eliasson show you have to be willing to go that extra mile - you know, perhaps turn the building upside down on its head or install wall to wall waterworks / fog machines / deepfreeze elements, or something of that nature. And wow, did they out-install themselves up at Louisiana this time. To such a degree, that you hardly recognize the part of the museum where his massive Riverbed installation is - well, installed.

Tons and tons of Icelandic stone is forming a naturalistic and sloping landscape, intersected by a small bubbling brook (hardly a river, but that's fair enough). To anyone with prior knowledge of these particular rooms, the whole setting is wonderfully confusing, and the place is almost irrecognizable. You see Louisianas delicate white brick walls and blonde wood - but otherwise the place is transformed. The experience is big, dirty, noisy, it smells of dust and wet cement, but the sound of the streaming water is underneath it all, as a little cheerful tune.  

We saw it in natural daylight - but I really wonder how it looks in the evening. Maybe I have to go check? Anyway, the filtered, dull light works well with the scenario. And it is anything but monochrome.

It's a fun exhibition to visit with children - and I recommend you put on old jeans and worn trainers. It's seriously dusty! You are forced to walk in really wobbly terrain, and bend and sometimes almost crawl in the dirt. As I have written before, I like it a lot when art and architecture relate. This is definitely one relation you can feel, hear and smell. Architecture is a very sophisticated art form, if you ask me (and yes, it is art) - but sometimes it takes a visual, conceptual artist to show us the energy of architectural space. Olafur Eliasson is so great at that.

As usual, there have been critics saying that the show isn't edgy or contemporary enough - but I don't think they realize just how discussion-provoking it is - to most people - to fill an elegant modern art temple, such as this, with filthy rubble, basically. And in such amounts! There is something there, that's for sure. Go climb it yourself, if you have the chance.

You can watch films about his work, as well - they look interesting, but we didn't see them - and you can see a room full of his conceptual / experimental models of this and that. They are great fun to study for an origami / papercrafting nut like me, but, for some unexplained reason, bathed in this sick yellow light. I wonder why?

In the end, you get to see my son and myself - and see the two very different modes in which we experienced the Rivedbed. Thanks for the gif-pics, Anne-Marie!

The Jazz Age - more Coralie Bickford-Smith

These deserve a post of their own. F. Scott Fitzgeralds novels, in a setting that really befits them, with heavy, metallic art deco style dust jackets, again by the amazing Coralie Bickford-Smith.

I should get at least The Great Gatsby, one of my very, very favorite novels since I read it first as a teenager. I have worn out a couple of cheap paperback versions, and probably mislaid at least one, but this is so beautiful. I want them all! I do miss the short stories in this edition though, they are my best F. Scott Fitzgerald read, after The Great G., I never, ever tire of them.

Penquin clothbound classics

I sometimes stumble opon a mention of these beautiful books, and then I just want to own them all. They are just irresistible, and I love the work of British book designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. The idea here is so simple, and it is so well done. The book is bound in one color fabric, the print is in another single, contrasting color, there is one, simple graphic statement, and just one font. That's it. And it looks SO good. See how gorgeous the spines are - and spines are really hard to do.

They make me want to be a literary lady of leisure (and a book designer!), sipping tea in a salon, catching up on my classics. And not - as the case is with me, who is actually a compulsive reader - slouching somewhere with a paperback with unidentified stains and lots of smudgy pencilmarks (Ahem, yep, I make notes in the back of my books) and something called 'donkeys ears' in Danish. You know, when you fold the corner of the page you're at?

These I would wash my hands for, and sit upright to read in.

You can see them all here - and see more work from the brilliant Coralie here.

I hopped on my bike and went to Rungstedlund

Every summer I live a fifteen minute bicycle ride from the home of one of Denmarks more famous authors, Karen Blixen - or Isak Dinesen, as I think she is mainly known as, in the English speaking countries. It is a small country estate, Rungstedlund, that belonged to her family, and was her childhood home - as well as her home when she returned from Kenya, from 1931 until her death in 1962. Her grave is in the park there.

Photo: Erik K. Abrahamsen

I have read a lot of her books, and when I was young I especially enjoyed her stories. Finally wisiting her home the other day, now a museum in her honor, made me feel like rereading her work, but today I think I would read her letters from Africa - I always wanted to read those, but I kind of forgot about her, a bit. 

She was a very unusual and fascinating woman, a feminist in her day, a very rebellious and not very typical aristocrat - but also a haunted woman who suffered some very painful losses in her life. She had the idea, that for those losses, she was given the gift of storytelling, in a pact with the devil. 

She also got to hang out with Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe and Carson McCullers
(in 1959 - and here is a funny description of that lunch party - Photo: Rungdstedlund)

The house is small and exquisite, and her great passion for making strange and wild floral arrangements, is being kept alive by volunteers, who fill the rooms with flowers, greens and basically anything that grows, year round - in her particular and very well documented style. Her friend, the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen, took photographs of them, and even dedicated a whole book to the subject.

Karen Blixen and an explosion of tulips (Photo: Steen Eiler Rasmussen / Rungstedlund)

A pretty place to visit, if you have read her work, I would say. And you should, it is worth the effort. It is not prose you read in a hurry, or as light entertainment - her style is abundant, exotic, meandering, and you need to be a bit patient, when you embark on her stories. But I have gotten swept away, again and again. I love this collection of stories: Winter's Tales - and of course her most famous: Seven Gothic Tales. Out of Africa is a wonderful read as well.

Here are some of my impressions of the place..... (PS: it also has a nice café, so stop by for coffee!)

Karens avant garde flowers - a bouquet with asparagus berries! / Her work room / I love that little African stool / Karen in the work room, tapping away on her tiny, old Corona
(last photo courtesy of Rungstedlund)

More flowers / the park has some nice wild, rambling bits / Karen Blixen by a sundial in the park  (photo courtesy of Rungstedlund) / The caption on the sundial says: 'No shade without light'

I have just discovered Jacob Hashimoto

Jacob Hashimoto is an American artist (born 1973), based in New York, who works in mixed media, and most especially paper of all different kinds. His Japanese roots and a fondness for making paper kites, is a main theme in his work, and what he does with all those kites, is quite something. He makes enormous and insanely intricate room installations, and wall pieces of layered and layered paper and bamboo objects that are powerful and fragile at the same time.

His gallery in new York is Mary Boone Gallery, and the image above (image: Wallpaper magazine on Instagram) is from a show that just opened last week. It is called Sky Farm Fortress and I would be running very fast to see it, if I were anywhere near those parts. I find his work wildly inspiring and have been studying him on Google all afternoon.

Now you can do the same....!

From the installation Gas Giant at MOCA Pacific Design Centre, Los Angeles, 2014.

Click HERE for a time lapse video on YouTube, showing a 2012 hanging of this work

Click HERE for another video, where the camera slowly explores the Gas Giant in detail

Here are some of his incredible wall hangings - photos courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery.

The last one (below) is called Plunk - also Mary Boone Gallery. I love the way he explores one simple idea - here: the plaid pattern made with the tape - and just goes on and on and on! It is a kind of chaos, but a very controlled one. Repetition is a great trick, and working in cheap, accessible materials - that is just great. I hope I get to study his work up close some day.

USA trip # 1: I heart Miami

Hi again - I'm back after a rather long recovery of my hand, and a lot of unusually steady hot and sunny weather here in DK. Just lately it started getting cold and rainy, so this would be a perfect time to post a little, belated postcard from beautiful, sunny Miami, starting point of an East coast road trip I took with my family back in May.

A bit to my surprise, actually, I really fell in love with the little bit of Miami we saw. We spent three days, and chose to stay at a small deco hotel in the middle of the infamous party district South Beach, even though we are a fairly quiet family travelling with a five-year old. We did not regret that! It was a lovely, surprisingly tranquil place - okay, there were lots of people hanging out at the beach front cocktail bars, but the scene was cosy and relaxed, rather than rowdy and noisy. Maybe it was the time of year (early May), I don't know? But we all loved it! To me it was first of all a haven of fantastic, kitchy, colorful and well-preserved art deco, midcentury modern and any kind of fun revival architecture you can think of, and so much more of it than I expected. The so called Deco District is lovingly well taken care of, and the lush, exotic greenery and the magnificent beach next to it, all make it a very interesting place to visit.

Here are some (mostly architectural) snapshots - and if you would like to see some more pictures, from the Cuban district Little Havana, from the gorgeous Venetian Pool in Coral Gables and a few more places, you could check out my flickr album.

Thank you, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce

So here I sit, with a hand up to no good, after an operation that went well, but was a bit more complicated than first assumed. No long explanations, but they had to cut quite a bit in my hand, resulting in an impressive embroidery of stitches and some healing time ahead of me, that I just have to patient about. I type this  v e r y   s l o w l y  with my left index finger and lots af tpyos typos.

You can imagine my delight, when I discovered that seasons 5 and 6 with my old pals from the struggling ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce were available on Netflix. Thank heaven. So while I wait for a bit more strength (right now I can't even squeeze a bit of toothpaste out, or put a rubber band in my hair) and mobility, and getting the stitches out, I while the afternoon away in their fabulous company.

Here is my hand, and it's hoping to get better

Tomorrow I'm going to the hospital to have a small procedure done in my right hand - I am having many years of carpal tunnel syndrome seen to, by a clever surgeon. Here is what he drew on my hand, when he explained the procedure to me! I hope he doesn't have to cut that much. No, seriously, it was just to explain something with nerves, tissue and ..... something? Well, I make a point of trusting people who seem to know their business, so I am going to let doctor Ove from Rigshospitalet do his thing. And I really, really hope it helps.

It is a bit unclear how long it will be, before I can type or use a mouse or a pen again, but I hope it won't be long. The bright side is, that I will be absolutely forbidden to do any housework or heavy lifting for several days, ha ha!