About this Event
Karl Holmqvist lives and works in Berlin. A Swedish artist known for his text‑based works, poetry, and readings, Holmqvist’s practice focuses on responding to a place, situation, or specific context through the creation of books, wallpaper, lamps, installations, video, and spoken‑word performance. The evolving structures of his practice often suggest the formation of improvised communities that emerge around the staging and reading of his poems.
His re‑renderings of words and phrases draw from generic forms of speech and written language, ranging from common sayings to literary references, from popular music to political activism. Holmqvist repositions these sampled fragments in new contexts, allowing ambiguity and double meanings to surface.
Holmqvist’s work explores the instability of language and dissects its various layers of meaning. Beginning from the tradition of concrete poetry, the artist subverts found phrases, song lyrics, and idiomatic expressions, using them as raw material. Holmqvist recycles everyday language and reconsiders its communicative purpose. His works function both as reflections on the use of language and as instruments for raising social, political, and cultural issues. His typographic games create patterns that play with the boundaries between the abstract and the real.
He has exhibited in numerous solo shows, including at Beau Travail, Stockholm; The Brick (formerly LAXART), Los Angeles; Fridericianum, Kassel; Word Square at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (curated by Mathieu Copeland); Power Station, Dallas; Camden Arts Centre, London; and Bergen Kunsthall, Norway. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, LA (2024); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2022); Tai Kwun Art Centre, Hong Kong (2020); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2018); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2009); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2005); and Manifesta 7, Trento (2008). He has participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2011, and in Performa, New York, in 2005, 2007, 2013, and 2023.
Karl Holmqvist’s works are held in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fridericianum, Kassel; and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. He is represented by Galerie Neu, Berlin; dépendance, Brussels; and House of Gaga, Mexico City.
The INSIDE/OUT public programme of lectures invites speakers and leading thinkers whose breadth of work, practice, thought and collaboration we feel will inspire all our students and staff across the wide range of disciplines in the Leeds School of Arts.
Please visit LEEDS ART GALLERY – current exhibitions include Mike Nelson: M62 (East, West) | Plant Dreaming, an exhibition of works on plants, and their real and imagined histories until 19 April 2026 | Some Steel: Sculpture and Steel in Britain, 1960-90, an exhibition tracing the relationship between sculpture and steel over a period of thirty years
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, Portland Way, Leeds, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
