Let's take the Oriental carpet, which the Germans often just call the "Persian". For many of us, this is the epitome of an obsolete bourgeois interior. Wherever there is an Oriental rug, that's where people "live", with their sofas, sideboards, and potted plants. The kind of place where Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was at home. Here people also know the rules of good manners. And on the table there is only the classic tableware: Dresden China, Nymphenburg.

Asisi Visual Culture GmbH from Berlin is a cultural enterprise that stands for the creation of illusional spaces, both on a national and on an international level. Its founder, the artist Yadegar Asisi, has created the world’s largest 360° panoramas and is committed to the idea that the act of “seeing” and “understanding” is an essential factor in the development of the individual, and society as a whole. It is Asisi’s aim, with the aid of his exhibitions and educational programmes, to promote a lasting concept of visual culture.

A visit to Copenhagen often includes the major museums in the city centre, but it is well worth while to travel to Charlottenlund, just 8 km north of the city, to the Ordrupgaard museum which houses one of northern Europe’s better collections of Danish and French art from the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The museum is in an old manor house in a large park, and there is a modern extension designed by architect Zaha Hadid. In 2008 the furniture designer Finn Juhl’s house became part of Ordrupgaard too.

It is not every day one has the opportunity to see an exhibition of art from South Korea, but now a Stockholm gallery has given us the chance and provided an insight into some aspects of contemporary art from the Korean peninsula. This is an ambitious project for an independent venue.

It is called simply Fotografiska – i.e. ‘Photographic’ but they always use their Swedish name – and has placed Stockholm firmly on the map for anybody interested in contemporary photography. Situated on the city-centre waterfront, in the old south-side harbour area, this museum-cumgallery is housed in a former customs building dating back to 1906 and designed by Ferdinand Boberg, a leading Swedish architect of the period.

The exhibition “The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction” illuminates the influences and motifs of a principle whose impact on design transcends time and place.

A flamboyant career created with passion and dedication fused with natural talent. Tall and long-limbed, his sculptural body reflecting a devotion to sports, two deep dark eyes looking down from almost two metres, Arik Levy took a shortcut to the world of international design to be recognized as an inventive and polyhedric creator. Designer, technician, artist, photographer and filmmaker, Levy’s skills are multi-disciplinary and his work – fuelled by a poetical and never-ending zeal for research and innovation combined with an unpredictable and surprising world of visions – can be found on display in renowned shop-windows as well as prestigious galleries and museums worldwide.

Following a biographical introduction with data, photos, a filmed interview and the two chairs “Negativo” and “Positivo” that marked the start of the brothers’ collaboration, the exhibition goes on to present the oeuvre through the structuring of the work in regard to the fundamental formal and technical principles pursued by the Campanas since the beginning of their partnership.

Eliasson is probably best known for ‘The Weather Project’ at the Tate Modern, a blockbuster 2003 event that set a new standard for contemporary installation art. One can’t fault Eliasson for a lack of ambition. He dominated the entire London gallery with his evocations of the sun and sky. 

A couple of weeks ago, we were lucky enough to have a chance to see the latest series of works by Hella Jongerius at Galerie Kreo in Paris.