Today I visited an exhibition at Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt.  It is about Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) or bether known as Plexiglas.
This  extremely weather-resistant plastic was developed to patent stage in 1933 by the Darmstadt-based Röhm company. Its constant high transparency, light weight as compared with glass and wide range of forming options are the attributes that make PLEXIGLAS® an equally attractive material for architecture and design.

With its variability in production this plastic put its stamp on the modernist movement, and made complex forms also feasable with transparency. From Panton’s lightnings and chairs to the light roof construction of Munich’s Olympic Stadium, many new forms were made possible by this material.

Mathildenhöhe, where the exhibition was shown is also the birthplace of the german art deco movement (Jugendstil). Several houses and a museum show how this movement opened the way to modernism. This place near Frankfurt is until today important for the design scene because there is also located the “Design Zentrum Hessen” and the “FH Darmstadt – design faculty”.

The Hangaram Design Museum in Seoul is located within the Seoul Arts Center, an cultural institution for music (music hall & opera house) arts (Fine Art Plaza & art museum, calligraphy art museum) and design.

Three different exhibitions were displayed at the Hangaram Design Museum, at the entrance is a popular cafe, conspicuous with the colourful Philippe Starck chairs.

Exhibitions:
All light! All right? (new influences in lightning design)
Dialog in the dark (the famous dialog museum exhibition)
Verner Panton (retrospective)

I went first to all light! All right? It was huge hall in dark. At the beginning there were cabinet/ square box for display of each light. Here was displayed work of famous international designers. And far inside was displayed work of Korean designers. In a free space without box, each light has enough space for it own lightning.

And in a separated hall there was fashion light! Passion light exhibition. This was consisting of 4 designers. Philippe Starck, Verner Panton, Jasper Morrison, Susanne Kessler & Petra Eichler.

On the wall was made with Paper cut art a nature in a deep forest. Such as a bird and trees and small dear. In the middle of the hall was a island on which was furniture and light of each designer displayed.

The Verner Panton retrospective showed famous exhibits like the Panton chair, the Heart corn and corn chair but also the many lightnings he made for Louis Poulsen.

After my visit in design museum I have also seen the Calligraphy Art Museum and art museum. In Art museum i could see fresh drawings of young Korean painters. Many of them were young but also well known in their branch. They were whether professor of university or winner of an award. I could see by this exhibition young talented painter in our generation in Korea. As following program was in Calligraphy Exhibition named “Emtpy Fullness” by Choi, Jung-Gyun. His widow sponsored these Drawings for this Exibihition. His work was Drawing with Poem or Writing only.

Yesterday I was in Nuremberg. The capital of the Franconian County in Bavaria is well known in Germany for it’s Christmas market and the traditional Christmas sweets like “Lebkuchen”. The last time I visited this town during my studies in 2003 on a step to Munich. We visited the “Neues Museum” (which hosted exhibits of the “Neue Sammlung” design collection at this time) and the Nazi buildings with the world war II documentation centre. At my trip yesterday I decided to see the “Neues Museum” (new museum) again and was disappointed. In 2003 I was surprised by the freshness of the building and the ambivalence of industrial design and contemporary art side by side. The design items are at the present time not showed, but the art collection did not benefit from the surplus of space. It is a fact that you will find some famous artists like Beuys or Avramidis, but you will miss a general system or a path. The permanent art exhibition looks like an overdimensioned flea market of expensive works without any system. Even a private collector would invest more time in a concept of uniformity or a patchwork. So it is not a wonder that this museum has a lack of visitors, even if it is in the heart of town. It is too boring for tourists and too poor in exhibits for art fans. Let’s see what happens when the design collection is back!

A museum preserves and exhibits this. Sometimes the building is an exhibit itself, if it is built by an famous architect, or if it is of historic relevance.

But what if the exhibition design becomes historic as well? In 1976 the famous functionalist German graphic designer Otl Aicher made the corporate design of the “Historisches Museum Frankfurt”. From pictograms to displays and prospectus. Today only some fragments remain in the prehistoric and numismatic department.

The clear functional design of the Ulm School (founded by Inge Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill) already vanished from daily life, and my generation could experience it only by books or some exhibits. In this museum somebody can see the perhaps last remaining original exhibition made by Otl Aicher. It’s future is unsafe because the geat parts of the Museum will be teared down and replaced by a new building.

Its permanent collections are displayed in a series of exhibition halls in the first floor, each of which has its own period (Renaissance, baroque, oriental, art deco) as well as a room about the Wiener Werkstätte (company that manufactured items of Austrian Avantgarde designers like Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser) and a room with architecture models.

The ‘Studiensammlung’ in the basement contains fascinating studies of different materials, like metal, wood, ceramics and the furniture collection. This part seems to be the more succeded part of the collection. It looks like a stock house and the clear white painted walls without windows focus the view on the exhibits.

The exhibition in the first floor suffers from the strong and heavy decorated rooms. It’s hard to feel them, because the building draw off the attention, e.g. in the floor it was hard to see the welded architecture model of Zaha Hadid’s Feuerwehrhaus.

The wide range of rare exhibits give a goog overview of 20th century design, for experts it is the best place to see and discover the relevance of the Austrian part of the modernist movement. In an other city this would be the mayor tourist attraction, but competition is hard in the capital of Habsburg and music history, historism and art decó and the viennese coffee houses. But visit the MAK and you will see Vienna with other eyes!

How often design is confused with art and how often art is inspired by design? Michail Galanakis collected some impressions at the Art Fair Suomi 08:

On Thursday the 11th of September there was the opening of the Finnish Art Fair 2008. Venue was the famous Cable Factory and the organizers (MUU artists’ association) managed to put together a terrific show. Admittedly here reigns photographic art but contemporary, experimental, exciting. Painting was almost absent, and only a few attempts for sculptures. Video and performative arts were also present. Could this signify the trivialization of the art scene? Or simply the desire of the artists for reproducible less time consuming pieces that can sell at reasonably high prices in these times of artistic pluralism (saturation?) And foreseeable economic crisis? In any case it seems to work! There was certainly a commercial interest motivated by the wide artistic offer and its affordability. The highlight of the opening was the performances of London based Finnish artist HK. With her funny uncomplicated lyrics and staging she comments on popular culture and sexualisation. Briefly my impression of the fair is this: Finnish artists often demonstrate a dark idiosyncrasy; the “put-a-smile-on-your-face” occasions though do take place and consist of the instances when Finnish dryness and quirkiness make their defining artistic splash.