K

Artist's book

A new artist’s book, “‘K” from Karl Holmqvist (born 1960 in Västerås, lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm), explores different levels of textual interaction with art. Both as concrete poems or language “drawings,” in which words and letters come to form patterns, and through repetitions somewhere between sense and non-sense, figuration and abstraction. His work may also take the form of longer spoken word poems intended for performance readings, again investigating the formats of repetition and variation, but with more of a rhythmic and musical structure tied to memory training techniques and oral tradition. Substantial parts of the book’s material are in fact gathered as “loans” from other artists, forming something of a mini-collection of language-art practices and references from Zurich and Berlin Dada, Futurism, Vorticism, Lettrisme, and onward to more contemporary formulations from artists such as Ferdinand Kriwet and Shannon Ebner.

The book has been designed by the artist together with Joshua Schenkel (Müller & Wesse, Berlin). It is published as a joint collaboration on the occasions of the “solstice readings” at Kunsthalle Zürich and a newly commissioned installation at Bergen Kunsthall.