John Holten is an
Irish-born novelist, artist, and curator He is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of
Berlin-based publishing company
Broken Dimanche Press
Broken Dimanche Press (BDP) is an international publisher and art platform founded by John Holten and Line Madsen Simenstad in 2009 in Berlin.
History
The name of the press was inspired by Yves Klein's Dimanche-Le Journal d’un Seul Jour, a ...
. He is a curator at NR / Projects, in Berlin Mitte. Since autumn 2015 Holten is a columnist for the Contemporary Food Lab.
The Readymades and The LGB Group
The LGB Group, the Eastern European avantgarde art collective Holten helped to revive in ''The Readymades'' (with Serbian artist and filmmaker Darko Dragicevic), enjoyed exhibitions in many cities as well as being included in
The Armory Show
The Armory Show is an international art fair in New York City, known as New York's Art Fair. Established in 1994 as the Gramercy International Art Fair by dealers Colin De Land, Pat Hearn, Lisa Spellman, Matthew Marks and Paul Morris, the annua ...
, New York in 2012. Holten discussed the group with philosopher Aengus Woods in an artwork that was exhibited at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, in the summer of 2012, infiltrating the prestigious gallery's inventory.
The writer and critic
Travis Jeppesen
Travis Jeppesen is an American novelist, poet, artist, and art critic. He is known, among other works, for his novel ''The Suiciders''; a non-fiction novel about North Korea, ''See You Again in Pyongyang''; and for his object-oriented writing work, ...
wrote of the project in ''Art in America:''
"Set in a Europe of not too long ago, covering the period that arguably constitutes the formation of our 21st-century milieu (from the 1990s Balkan Wars up to the mid-aughts), ''The Readymades'' documents a fictional network of Serbian artists known as the LGB Group (after the surnames of its three core members). Though vaguely reminiscent of real-life collectives from the region such as Irwin/NSK, the OHO Group—and much like an update of fellow Balkanite Tristan Tzara and his Dada cronies—Holten’s artists find themselves caught in the changing tide of history and war."
Contemporary Irish novelist Rob Doyle said
The ReadymadesJohn Holten
€˜s 2011 debut novel, was a marvel. A Bolañoesque, avant-garde page-turner, it trained a breezily pan-European sensibility on the story of a shadowy Serbian art collective at large in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. Alongside the book’s heady inventiveness, there were ample doses of sex, drugs and alcohol, and exhilarating, wistful evocations of being young, broke and brilliant in post-Cold War Europe...''The Readymades'' was largely ignored by the literary mainstream. One of the most remarkable novels of recent years, it has been read by relatively few people."
The novel subsequently sold out.
Collaborations
He has written many texts in collaboration with artists such as Natalie Czech, Mahony, Lorenzo Sandoval and Ari Benjamin Meyers
Ari Benjamin Meyers (born 1972 in New York) is an American artist and composer.
Meyers received his training as a composer and conductor at the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Peabody Institute. His practice includes creating musical pe ...
amongst others.
In 2012 Holten travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with Richard Mosse
Richard Mosse (born 1980) is an Irish conceptual documentary photographer.
Early life and education
Mosse was born in Kilkenny, Ireland. He lives and works in New York and Berlin.
He received a first class BA in English literature from King' ...
as production assistant on The Enclave, which represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2013. He subsequently edited A ''Supplement To The Enclave'' which was published on the occasion of Mosse's winning exhibition at the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize
Deutsch or Deutsche may refer to:
*''Deutsch'' or ''(das) Deutsche'': the German language, in Germany and other places
*''Deutsche'': Germans, as a weak masculine, feminine or plural demonym
*Deutsch (word), originally referring to the Germanic ve ...
in London.
Bibliography
Novels
* The Readymades (2011)
* Oslo, Norway (2015)
Short Stories in Artist Books
* 'One Story Multiple Events' in ''how a mosquito operates'' by Mahony ()
* 'Paris is a Forest, Rome is a Relic' in ''Anecdotal'' by Jani Ruscica ()
References
External links
John Holten's website
Broken Dimanche Press website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holten, John
Irish artists
Living people
Irish novelists
Year of birth missing (living people)