House of Gaga ❧ Karl Holmqvist Artists

House of Gaga ❧ #ALLTHISSCRATCHINISMAKINMEITCH…

GAGA Los Angeles is proud to present an exhibition of new works by Karl Holmqvist #ALLTHISSCRATCHINISMAKINMEITCH… his first in our Los Angeles location, but his fourth show with the gallery. The exhibition’s title refers to the late Malcolm McLaren’s early eighties exploration of New York underground music and youth culture, but can also be indicative of a type of saturation or overproduction. Too much of something can indeed be a good thing.

The exhibition unveils a newly produced wallpaper together with a series of paintings and sculpture. The wallpaper is made up of blown up handwritten notes by the artist multiplied by photo- copying and then rhythmically pasted directly to the gallery walls in repeating patterns. They specifically refer to language but also to current topics such as migration, environmental concerns and the type of obscenities embodied in this new reality descending upon us. Illustrating, perhaps, the way something repeats in one’s mind when trying to come to terms with or understanding it.

Together with the wallpaper comes a series of new paintings on raw canvas featuring marks and cuts, hung close to the floor and in a site-specific installation. Obscuring the wallpaper, these paintings provide a type of refuge or rest stops; one gets a sense of hidden meanings, of repetitions and of reading through something. All the canvases are in the 72×72 inches signature format used by painter Agnes Martin as an homage to the artist’s particular way of situating herself in the world through the use of abstraction and obsessive mark making.

Finally, there are three new name paintings made with magic marker on raw canvas listing artists that share the same first or last name ISAAC JULIEN CECCALDI, ANNE COLLIER SCHORR and ELIZA KIM DOUGLAS GORDON MATTA CLARK linking these artists together creating new composite names that typically defy generational or gender notions. Expressed through a plethora of other voices-FLUID AS IN SPEAKER-the artist nonetheless creates something that’s distinctly his own. On the night of the opening, Karl will also perform a spoken word poetry reading of found language material from the gallery’s outside patio overlooking the lake and surroundings of MacArthur Park.

Karl Holmqvist (b. Sweden, 1964) is an artist living and working in Berlin known for his text based works, poetry and readings. Recent solo exhibitions include One Child per Household, dépendance, Brussels; GUILTY FEET HAVE GOT NO RHYTHM, NICC, Brussels; KAPALBHATI, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Rome; From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva.

Installation
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Gaga is pleased to announce ICHBRAUCHEMASSPACE, Karl Holmqvist’s third show at the gallery (Entrevista con el vampiro 2009 y The hours of this watch is numbered 2012) this time together with Klara Lidén in a two person exhibition.

Both artists share a long and close friendship and have collaborated several times. For ICHBRAUCHEMASSPACE Lidén created a series of benches with new and recycled material as well as a motorized mobile using cardboard boxes with the words ON and/or NO graffitied in pink, produced for the first time for NEW THEATER in Berlin and used as part of the stage design for Holmqvist’s play The Rant. Karl is presenting a set of twelve new paintings using texts from diverse references, word and visual plays, and two Lettriste sculptures made in stainless steel and fluorescent lights that read TUFF and SHIT. As well for this show both artists collaborated in a new dance video titled Nhite Woise.

Again we can observe throughout the show the elements usually portrayed by the artists such as their interest for language, architecture, the utilitarian, the decorative, the public and the private, and the in and out references of each of them.

The pieces in the show reveal an intimate relation between each other, one says YES, the other one NO, one piece is on the floor the other on the wall, and all around we can read in repeated occasions how one is no one and how we need each other mutually, always, although it often seems impossible…

Installation
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Works
Karl Holmqvist

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (LICKMYLEGS), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (NUFFUN), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (#WATCHMEDANCE), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (GOOD4YOU4GOOD), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (UNONOESNINGUNO), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (ICHBRAUCHEMASSPACE), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (#WATCHMEDANCELICK), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (ONEONEISNOONE), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (ONEISNOONE), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (YESEYES), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (IFFYIFFYEYESEYES), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (IFFYIFFY), 2015
HP UV print on ultra ex true canvas
70.87 x 70.87 x 1.5 inches
180 x 180 x 3.8 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (SHIT), 2015
Stainless steel and fuorescent lamps
50.98 x 34.65 x 34.65 inches
129.5 x 88 x 88 cm

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (TUFF), 2015
Stainless steel and fuorescent lamps

50.98 x 34.65 x 34.65 inches
129.5 x 88 x 88 cm

Works
Klara Lidén

Klara Lidén
Untitled, 2015
Wood, recycled cardboard and metal
17.72 x 72.83 x 29.53 inches
45 x 185 x 75 cm

Klara Lidén
Untitled, 2015
Wood, recycled cardboard and metal
17.52 x 71.26 x 27.76 inches
44.5 x 181 x 70.5 cm

Klara Lidén
Untitled, 2015
Wood, recycled cardboard and metal
17.72 x 64.96 x 22.83 inches
45 x 165 x 58 cm

Klara Lidén
Untitled, 2015
Wood, recycled cardboard and metal
17.72 x 63.78 x 23.82 inches
45 x 162 x 60.5 cm

Klara Lidén
Untitled, 2015
Cardboard boxes, motors, white rope and graffiti
Dimensions variable

Video stills
"Nhite Woise"

Klara Lidén / Karl Holmqvist
Nhite Woise, 2015
HD video 00:04:17

Gaga is pleased to present The hours of this Watch is Numbered, the second solo show of Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist in the gallery.

The title from the exhibition is a misquote from the already irregular phrase, The Days of this Society is Numbered used by fellow artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. The subject is time and the immanent end of time. In the gallery there are a neon sign, an oversized wine glass, an erased drawing, a basket with marble sugar cubes, a voice-over animation video, a number of wall drawings and their reference material in a vitrine. The works in their various media (all works 2012) are based on quotes and misquotes from a variety of artists, writers, where the gallery comes to form something like a 3d collage, a Gesamtkunstwerk for our time.

Karl Holmqvist began his career as a poet and performer, making readings of poetry from the early 1990s in exhibition venues all over the world. In 2006, Holmqvist first began to show sculptures and objects. His work deals with the phenomenology of time, language and perception, with references ranging from current music hits, to the Situationists and the Beat Generation. His mediums include light, language and text as well as collage, sculpture and animated video.

Special thanks to: Josef Dalle Nogare, Sergio Granados, Antek Walczak & The Maestros

Installation
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House of Gaga ❧ The Hours Of This Watch Is Numbered

Works

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (I Want Dandy), 2012
Neon sign, plexi
Ed. 3 + 2

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (Erased Walczak), 2012
46.5 x 39.5x 4 cm
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (Marble Sugar Cube Shopping Basket), 2012
Aluminum basquet, marble sugar cubes, tooth brushes, tooth paste, glass, plexi, plinth, 140 x 100 x 158 cm
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (Copa Grande), 2012
Glass, 121cm x 27cm x 27cm
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (Wall drawing), 2012
Magic marker on wall, variables dimensions
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Wall drawing (Barbra Streisand), 2012
Magic marker on wall, variables dimensions
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Wall drawing (Beba Coca), 2012
Magic marker on wall, variables dimensions
Unique

Karl Holmqvist
Untitled (Artist’s Research), 2012
Mixed media installation in vitrine, variable dimensions
Unique
“Eat Sugar Spend Money” © Jessica Diamond, 1989

Karl Holmqvist
A is for A=R=A=K=A=W=A, 2012
DVD, Ed. 5 + 1

Installation
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Works

Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda
Sheʼs gone, 2009
00:03:30
DVD

Trisha Donnelly
Untitled, 2008
00:06:00
DVD

Adriana Lara
5, 2010
00:08:38
DVD

Danny Mc Donald
Mindy Moves In, 2010
00:09:33
DVD

Susanne M. Winterling
Untitled (loop in two), 2010
super 16mm to DVD

Karl Holmqvist
Iʼm with you in Rockland, 2005
25 min.
DVD

Nina Könnemann
Early Morning Lessons
00:01:48
DVD

Bernadette Corporation
Hell Frozen Over, 2000
00:19:24
DVD

Alex Hubbard
Paranoid Phase of Nautical Twilight, 2009
00:09:33
DVD

Nina Könnemann
Pleasure Beach
00:07:05
DVD

Antek Walczak
Dynasty, 1998
50 min.
DVD

Fernando Palma Rodriguez
Coyote, 2000
00:08:48
DVD

GaGa is proud to present ‘Entrevista Con El Vampiro’ the first Mexican One-Person exhibition by Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist. As indicated by the exhibition title, Karl Holmqvist looks to explore different forms of parasitic practices in a series of new works using a range of different media such as paintings and collages, and text in the form of an artist’s book, a new video, a small installation and an especially made “letterist” sculpture.

The works in the exhibition could be said to be ‘vampiric’ in the sense that they depend on works from other people, but also in many instances they deal with the symbolism surrounding vampires as society’s outcasts, moving between this worlds and other realms, as well as through photographic representations of the two lead actors, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt from the 1994 film that has given the exhibition its name. Mixing topics of various types of representation, occultism and pop culture.

Recent exhibitions from Karl Holmqvist include Westlondonprojects, London, Galerie Dependance in Brussels and Manifesta 7 in Trento, Italy. This summer he will participate in Art 40 Basel Art Premiere Section followed by a One-person exhibition at Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch in Berlin.