Mokin Museum in Insadong, Seoul

A visit to the Mokin Museum in Insadong, Seoul is the perfect complement to the Chicken Art Museum. Mokins are wooden figures used to decorate funeral carriages. If you read my previous post on the Chicken Museum, wooden chicken figures were used on the carriage as well. It was believed that chickens can guide the dead to the next world so that they won’t get lost.

There are a lot more animals that decorate the carriages as well as plants and fictional beings. The Mokin Museum has a massive collection (5000 pieces) of them but since it’s a small museum can only display a very small part of it.

The museum is located in Insadong. Opposite the Jogyesa Temple is a Buddhist culture and information center. Right next to the center is a small street where the museum is located. There are two Italian restaurants in that street one of which is Palazzo Due which is next to the museum. On the basement floor of the museum is a two-part gallery which doesn’t exhibit wooden figures. The actual museum is in the floor above, take the steps and pay at the counter (5000 Won).

Now you can see the figures!

An Evening in…

Another set of random pics, akin to “A Day in…”

A Day in…

Random shots on my way to school. Strange angles, objects etc. serving no purpose. But I set the “art” tag, so that’s what it is

Seoul Olympic Museum of Arts

When you have very little time, you tend to choose places where you can do multiple things. Today I went to the Olympic Park, the park around the main site of the 1988 Summer Olympics. I took a different route and arrived at the SOMA (map) first, the Seoul Olympic Museum of Arts. It’s not exactly a MOMA but it had a decent collection of paintings, photos and installations. Entrance is 1000 Won for adults and there are some sculptures outside, just a tiny part of the big sculpture park which is situated in the rest of the Olympic Park. The special exhibition I saw at the SOMA was “Into Drawing”.

Tokyo Designer’s Week

A classmate of mine told me about the Tokyo Designer’s week which is held at some main locations and various galleries. I only had time to visit one location and the first thing I did after entering was to grab one of these free plastic bags where you can carry all the papers etc. .

Unlike Design Festa, the exhibition was separated into various big tents. The whole thing also seemed to have a more professional feeling, with many people coming to look not to boy. In the big hall, photographing was prohibited, possible because they fear cheap copies (as if that could stop them…).

The future belongs to foldable furniture

More interesting, because somewhat more “daring” were the exhibits by art students. Some of them were shown in an open-air space, others in small containers. Some were also interactive. All of the pics on this page are from the student exhibitions.

I particularly liked the one where they built chairs and sofas out of balls, PET bottles or old clothes.

Origami

Whenever I built a paper plane, it generally knew only one direction: downwards. But there are some people who are really good at folding papers and they could exhibit their work at one of Hamburg’s finest museum, the Museum fuer Kunst und Gewerbe. Jenny, Bettina and I went there and the museum staff didn’t seem to mind the camera (or they didn’t notice which I doubt somehow). Over 140 exhibits from 44 artists were shown and there were some really complex works on display. We also strolled through the permanent exhibition like the piano collection but skipped the porcelain one. The exhibit is running until 7th October 2007.

Design Festa 2007

Design Festa time! I got four free tickets from the household agency so obviously I had to go. I met with two others of the 300 Yen Bar Gang, Kelly and Kevin at Shinagawa to take the Yurikamome line for the Tokyo Big Sight, the famous inverted-pyramid-event-hall. Inside, there was a long queue of people waiting for their turn to buy a ticket. Kelly had two additional with him and gave them to a Western pair. Of course we could jump the queue and enter through the colourful gate. Kevin and me were newcomers to this event.

Status check

There are hardly any people who ring the doorbell and the bell has an awful sound. So I’m always shocked if I hear my doorbell and today it was not the postman: It was someone from the local police. I immediately thought that a crime happened in the neighbourhood (alright, I’m paranoid) but he was merely there to check who is living in the rooms what their purpose of stay is, name and so on. He spoke little English and I guess I was too nervous to form a few meaningful sentences in Japanese but I guess he will return next month or so. It’s a good idea to always know where your passport is since the visa stamp explains a lot. He was checking the other tenants as well and there was no inspection of the rooms or anything like that, just 4, 5 questions and we were done.

After that I went to Shibuya to look for the Nanzuka Underground, an art gallery. Although I had a map, this location turned out to be pretty hard to find and I gave up after a while. Before I went looking for the gallery, I listened to some music coming from a public stage at Shibuya station. They played some good rock music.

Berlin. Again. Sigh.

Some people say it’s crazy to visit Berlin via regional express trains (it takes about four times longer compared to the ICE), others just smile (like my Japanese teacher). Well, this was my sixth visit to Germany’s capital and this time together with my mom. We arrived at Berlin-Hauptbahnhof (tief) and then continued to Westkreuz in order to see the Funkturm, which today is just a sightseeing spot without any broadcast functions. There were many bikers there today because of the motorbike days in Berlin.

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Originally we thought about driving to Berlin but I had to finish a few articles so we decided on the Hamburger Kunsthalle instead, an art museum situated near Hamburg’s central station. The other alternative (Celle, a small town in the south of Hamburg) was ruled out because the weather was not very good.
The art museum shows works by classic and modern artists and is quite big. The classic works are dominated by religious themes of course. There is also a nice restaurant inside. Currently they show a black cube outside which resembles the Kaaba, some art halls (like the one in Berlin) thought it might cause protests in the near east world but so far everything is quiet in Hamburg.