Untitled (WHAT? WHEN? WHY? WHO?) by Karl Holmqvist

Ebeltoft, 2018

Autumn 2018 presented the art installation Untitled (WHAT? WHEN? WHY? WHO?) by Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist, who has been invited to engage with the world of textiles and the spaces of our Ebeltoft headquarters.

As part of the commission Karl Holmqvist designed the customised textile ‘Verpan’ featuring six variations of word-based patterns. These create a sculpture composed of twenty-seven cubes, which can be randomly placed creating varying combinations of words.

On the occasion of the launch Karl Holmqvist presented a spoken word performance based on readings of his own poetry, video and sound – in collaboration with the artists FOS and Ida Ekblad.

The project was curated by South into North. 

Karl Holmqvist is known for using a wide range of formats–poetry readings, installation, and sculpture–to bring out the primal qualities of language.

He is one of a current generation of artists working with language and text as a sculptural or performative material. His aim is to spark the creative process in the viewer, seeing his art and poetry as a translation of the complexities of contemporary life. He blends poetry with pop music and his texts, composed of anecdotes as famous as they are diverse, explore the theme of communication and language.

Holmqvist’s recent one-person exhibitions include Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Geneva, Indipendenza, Rome (with Klara Liden), Kunstverein Braunschweig (with Klara Liden), Power Station, Dallas and Camden Arts Centre, London. He has participated in the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2011, and Performa, New York in 2005, 2007 and 2013. In 2013 he received the Arthur Köpke Memory Fund Award.