citylikeyou — London / Leif Podhajsky

Leif is a Grammy Nominated Visual Artist and Creative Director. His approach is based on the exchange between organic systems and new technologies that strive to inspire and stimulate thought.

http://leifpodhajsky.com/

Artist Art Director Graphic Designer Visual Artist

Current city: Berlin

Other cities: London Copenhagen

leifpodhajsky.com

Leif is a Grammy Nominated Visual Artist and Creative Director. His approach is based on the exchange between organic systems and new technologies that strive to inspire and stimulate thought.

Berlin / Art

The central ‘Mitte’ area of Berlin is packed tight with galleries and museums, which means you can cram a lot into a short amount of time, if that’s what you want. The best of the lot is the Me Collectors Room, which shows off large chunks of the Thomas Olbricht collection alongside other contemporary private artworks. The permanent ‘Wunderkammer’ display offers over 200 pieces from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, with a solid focus on the strange and macabre. There’s even a Mark Ryden original that fits in nicely.

Berlin / Art

What’s not to like about The Sammlung Boros Collection? It’s a brilliant private collection of contemporary art held captive in a monstrous, symmetrical ex-Nazi bunker with two metre thick concrete walls, dominating an area of a thousand metres squared. It also doubled as a hardcore techno and fetish club in the ‘90s, of which traces linger in every corner.

Berlin / Bar

If you want something a little different from your beer, try Lager Lager. "We are an independent bottle shop and taproom in Neukölln with a passion for all things beer. Choose from our 8 rotating taps and 250+ bottles, with new stock arriving each week. Drink in or takeaway a Growler bottle of your favourite beer using our counter-pressure bottle filler, which guarantees freshness."

Berlin / Museum

The Hamburger Bahnhof – 'Museum für Gegenwart' which was originally a train station is a terrific museum featuring a selection of contemporary art.

Berlin / Art

Peres Projects mostly showcases young, emerging artists and is at the forefront of fusing art with fashion, celebrity and the love of a good party, which seems to work very well in Berlin. Having recently moved into an ex-Soviet building on Karl Marx Allee, the giant new space contrasts brilliantly with the commanding facade.

Berlin / Architecture

I never knew this neighbourhood existed and went to visit a friend and was instantly transported out of Berlin into some sort of 50's utopia. "The Hansaviertel is a prime example of modern architecture and urban planning in the fifties in Berlin. 36 individual buildings or ensembles still form the model of modern architecture and urban planning of the 1950s. The southern part of the war-damaged Hansaviertel, which lies between the S-Bahn line and Tiergarten, was chosen as the central demonstration area of the International Building Exhibition in order to present the "city of tomorrow" - in deliberate contrast to the East Berlin Stalinallee and the restored tenement barracks." - berlin.de Also visit The Akademie der Künste, if not for the art then the architecture alone.

Berlin / Park

A green oasis wedged between the continuous blocks of apartments, this Cemetery provides a place to be alone or take sleeping kids. I love how from the front it looks slightly macabre and a rigid with it's iron gate. But if you dare to enter its a fantastic place to escape and think. There's a battle going on locally about adding a building inside the ground to help fund the archive and maintenance of the site. The Chair Anke Reuther feels the park is being disrespected with children playing on the headstones and people using it as a place for picnics. Whilst i don't know the in's and out's I love seeing this beautiful 'life cycle' playing out under the trees (which have probably seen it all before). I love that people use a cemetery for living and in our ever crowded cities a green space is being claimed by the community. I do feel there is a hushed respect that i don't see in other parks which gives the place a reflective mood. Personally another building would ruin the magic of the place. Perhaps some more input from the people who use it could be the key? Or even a re-examination of the inscription above the gate: Make life good and beautiful here, no other world is, no resurrection.

London / Music Venue

Audiophile paradise. Boasting one of the coolest looking and beautifully crafted sound-systems I've ever seen. More listening bar than club, it has a low key vibe with a diverse roaster of talented DJ's spinning an eclectic mix of tunes and full albums.

London / Music Venue

Brilliant Corners...Great sound system, vinyl only, dancing, left field, fourth world, jazz, afro, and some refreshing cocktails to help with all the sweating. Probably the only place i will actually dance in. They also do amazing Japanese food earlier in the evening.

London / Music Venue

One of the best places in the world to see left field, experimental and creative new music which sits outside the realm of the mainstream. It should be cherished. I wish i went more often...Some highlights of mine include Midori Takada and Acid Mothers Temple.

London / Artist

Joanne Hummel Newell (b 1982) studied at Kingston University London from 2001 - 2004 and at The Royal College of Art, London, from 2004 -2006. Joanne is Co Director of artist run organisation Foal Arts is currently represented by Folly and Muse Gallery, London/Munich and Newblood Art London. Recent selected exhibitions and short lists include WW Gallery collateral exhibition at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Jerwood Drawing Prize, RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Watercolour Society Contemporary Competition, Shoosmiths Art Prize, The Other Art Fair London and Art MUC Munich with Folly and muse Gallery. Press features include the UK Times and Observer Newspaper, Fresh Paint magazine selected by Andrew Salgado, After Nyne Magazine, women in art issue. Works are included in public and private collections in UK, USA, Hong Kong and Australia. Joanne has also received a number of Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Awards for temporary installations and projects.

London / Writer

Reeme Idris is a freelance features writer based in London, often in Paris.

London / Art Director

Art Director of Little White Lies Magazine and Illustrator, Laurène Boglio also loves making quirky animated black and white gifs. She loves 0.38 and 0.5mm black Muji pen. Photo credit: Pete Davies. petergdavies.com

London / Artist

Misha Milovanovich is a Belgrade-born artist living and working in London. Misha works across several mediums, from sculpture to painting and live art. Characterised by vivid colour, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, Misha's visual work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms. She often features discarded shards of consumerism - unloved icons of disposability and careless consumption. Misha's work is often a symphonic abstraction. Her colourful, densely layered works are held in a state of tension between order and chaos, rational structure and spontaneity. She combines depth and surface relief, orchestrating bold contrasts of form, texture and space in her pictures. An intimate colour palette of bodily fluids - red, pink, white, black, yellow and brown - animate the writhing forms and the refracted memories of cartoonish cultural production. A cultural polymath, Misha is constantly engaged in observing society and it’s distortions of desire, lust and attitudes to the body. Traditional techniques have been studied and absorbed and although her work is partly conceptual, it's execution always reflects these hard won technical abilities. Misha's main subject matter is emotion, so naturally her work is highly personal and biographical in ways that create a direct, emotional response from the viewer. Empathy and the universals of human experience - passion, nostalgia, desire and disgust are inescapable in her work. Misha is herself a ‘displaced’ person, having left Serbia for London in her late teens she still carries within her a ‘stranger’s perspective’ and perceives the world as an outsider, someone ever alert to the non-verbal subtleties of communication. Misha's artistic progenitors include her mentor Martin Kippenberger, Wassily Kandinsky and Phillip Guston as well as contemporary artists Gilbert and George, Keith Tyson, Robert Pruitt and Jim Lambie.

London / Fashion Designer

Brazilian Fashion designer living in London

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