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.
