Karl Holmqvist's Guide to Berlin
Karl Holmqvist with the Berlin Wall. Photo by Lukas Panek.
Karl Holmqvist is a beloved friend of Berlin’s heterogeneous art world, known for his spoken word readings and their written forms, including painted directly onto walls.
The Swedish artist’s repetitive prose spans the political to the mundane with sharp contemporaneity, drawing on his education in literature and linguistics as well as popular culture, art history, and basically impossible to get in-jokes. Questioning the fundamentals of language itself, Holmqvist departs from the seemingly inherent respect for language and the implicit ideas about what’s right and wrong, starting with making visual arts as a writer, just to break up distinctions of what is what. Think of the accuracy of punctuation or how to properly construct a sentence, and how poetry can evade it.
The artist’s charmingly shy persona is contrasted with an ability to find himself in front of crowds of attentively listening fans in all kinds of places, as exemplified in an 11-page CV of exhibitions courtesy of Galerie Neu, Berlin.
Karl Holmqvist #ALLTHISSCRATCHINISMAKINMEITCH… GagaReena, Los Angeles, 2019
Holmqvist has participated in the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2011 and Performa, New York in 2005, 2007, 2013 and 2023 and his past solo exhibitions include at Gladstone, New York; Fridericianum, Kassel; Nasjionalmuseet, Oslo; Camden Arts Center, London and House of Gaga, Mexico City. Ahead of Berlin Art Week, his solo exhibition will open at dépendance in Brussels on Thursday 4 September, coinciding with Brussels Art Week.
Berlin Trilogy PART I, his latest book, will be launched ahead of Berlin Art Week 2025 at Kunsthalle Zürich asking: WALLS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR? The reading will coincide with the closing of friend and fellow artist Klara Lidén’s solo exhibition at the prestigious institution on 7 September 2025. The Berlin launch of his latest book will take place at Martin Gropius Bau on 2 October.
Image credits: (1) Installation view, Karl Holmqvist, #SAVEYOURTEARS..., Galerie Neu, Berlin 2021; (2) Karl Holmqvist TAPIS DE LECTURE (D’APRES DGF), 2021 Copy of artist’s book on carpet, Magazines, shoes and slippers; (3, 4, 5) Karl Holmqvist, Summer is On, 2022 at Château Royal, Berlin. Photos by Peter Lange; (6) Installation view, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Karl Holmqvist, HERE COMES MY FACE, Gladstone, New York, 2022 (7) Karl Holmqvist #ALLTHISSCRATCHINISMAKINMEITCH… GagaReena, Los Angeles 2019 (8) Karl Holmqvist with the Berlin Wall. Photo by Lukas Panek.
In Berlin, you can always find Karl Holmqvist’s permanent installation SUMMER RENAISSANCE inscribed on the walls above the bar of Château Royal, a five-star hotel rich with challenging contemporary artworks by internationally influential local artists like Holmqvist himself. As a presence that would be greatly missed if he were to leave Berlin, we are grateful to have Karl as our guide to the city. Danke und tack Karl.
☉ Where do you most feel at home, apart from at home in Berlin?
HAHA MAYBE AT CHATEAU ROYAL OR GETTING LOST AFTER DARK IN THE TIERGARTEN.
☉ How do you relate to the Berlin Art World?
WAS ALWAYS CLAIMING TO BE A BERLIN ARTIST OR EVEN A NEW YORK ONE INITIALLY RATHER THAN A SWEDISH ONE AND ANYWAY OBJECTING TO THIS KIND OF COMPARTMENTALISATION OF ALWAYS PLACING PEOPLE ACCORDING TO AGE AND NATIONALITY.
☉ WALLS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?
WELL, YOU CAN WRITE ON THEM, WALLPAPER THEM OR INSTALL ARTWORKS FOR THE MORE CONVENTIONAL EFFECT. OF COURSE YOU CAN ALSO CLIMB THEM WHENEVER YOU FEEL CORNERED OR TOO LOCKED IN. ACTUALLY, ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE, IT’S A RETAKE ON EDWIN STARR’S 1970 HIT WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? AND THE ANSWER OF COURSE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. WHETHER YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR OR AGAINST SOMETHING OR SOMEHOW BENEFITTING ECONOMICALLY FROM THIS INDUSTRY YOU NEED TO RETHINK THAT FOR WHAT IT’S ACTUALLY WORTH.
