Artist: Alicja Kwade
Exhibition title: Materia, Per Ora
Venue: Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, Italy
Date: May 10 – July 20, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome
“I’m trying to see what reality is for me, and what it is for us all”.
Fondazione Giuliani is pleased to present artist Alicja Kwade’s first solo show in Rome. Kwade’s research begins with an acute study of reality and its internal structures, in order to arrive at parallel mental universes with a multiplicity of possible readings. Fascinated by the indeterminate boundaries between the visible and invisible, Kwade explores what is real and what is not, stimulating the gaze of the spectator in a game where space, time, science and philosophy create a labyrinth of perceptions.
Through sculpture, installation, video and photography, Kwade manipulates and transforms everyday objects, creating different forms, imbuing them with different meanings and value, thus revealing the many and sometimes obscured substrates of the visible. Because, as the artist explains, matter exists in a space of eleven dimensions, seven of which are inaccessible and unknown to us but that coexist in parallel to those we already know. Forms and materials that inhabit our experiential universe undergo metamorphoses and distortions to demonstrate how anything can assume a different form and be subject to changes in its physical nature, structure and substance. Each of Kwade’s works conceals a meticulous scientific research expressed in a language constructed with synthetic and essential forms, where the sign invites us to think and reinterpret continuously what the eye and our unconscious observe. In addition to exploring our perception of reality, time and space, her works also question society and its conventions, and both the natural and artificial patterns that condition our way of thinking.
The exhibition in Fondazione Giuliani, MATERIA, PER ORA, is an even more in-depth study of material, matter and materiality. Kwade investigates the philosophical concept of deconstruction/construction, focusing on the process of transformation of matter in contact with different dimensions present in nature. Convinced that matter is nothing other than an infinite series of combinations of itself in space and time, her works play with repetition, decomposition, variation of scale and destruction/reconstruction, connoting them as sculptural meditations on the nature of objects. Dematerialisation generates a de-signification, a moment in which new elaborations and readings can occur, a possibility to represent space and time that we cannot yet perceive.
Alicja Kwade was born in 1979 in Katowice, Poland; she lives and works in Berlin. Her most recent international solo shows include: AMBO, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany (2018); LinienLand, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2018); ReReason, YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2017-2018); Phase, König Galerie, Berlin (2017); In Aporie, kamel mennour, Paris (2017); Medium Median, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); Alicja Kwade, De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2016); Against the Run, Public Art Fund, New York (2015-2016). In 2015 she was awarded Kunsthalle Mannheim’s prestigious Hector-Prize, and in 2017 her work WeltenLinie (One in a Time) was included in the Pavilion of Time and Infinity of the 57th Venice Biennial.
Alicja Kwade, MATERIA, PER ORA, Installation view at Fondazione Giuliani, May-July 2018, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, Radio (Alicja R-603), 2014, plastic 367.5 g, iron 325.7 g, brass 29.4 g, phenol resin 28.5 g, copper 26.5 g, aluminum 20.9 g, zinc 14.5 g, silicone 12.4 g, tin 10.8 g, magnet 9.5 g, ceramic 0.6 g, glass 0.2 g, 17 jars, vitrine, 132.1 x 196.2 x 32.4 cm, Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, MATERIA, PER ORA, Installation view at Fondazione Giuliani, May-July 2018, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, MATERIA, PER ORA, Installation view at Fondazione Giuliani, May-July 2018, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, _1518 leere Liter bis zum Anfang_, 2008/2018, 1337,28 kg empty Selters glass bottles with bottle tops, pulverized, drunk by Team of König Galerie, Courtesy the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin/London, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, Andere Bedingung (Aggregatzustand), 2009, five parts: wood, mirror, metal, brass, steel bar, variable dimensions, Courtesy the artist and Giuliani Collection, Rome, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, Totum pro parte (Ein Hocker ist ein Bild), 2017, found bar stool, mirror, glass, 107 x 94 x 94 cm, Anonymous, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, MATERIA, PER ORA, Installation view at Fondazione Giuliani, May-July 2018, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, Etwas Abwesendes, dessen Anwesenheit erwartet wurde, 2015, marble, dimensioni variabili / variable dimensions, Courtesy the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin/London, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, Candle Column (Alicja/Gregor), 2017, bronze, paint, 163,5 x 10 x 10 cm; 193 x 10 x 10 cm, Courtesy the artist, Photo by Giorgio Benni
Alicja Kwade, SUPPORT (Atleta), 2018, Carrara marble, partial replica (Greek original from 5th Century BCE), 108 x 40 x 35 cm, Courtesy the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin/London, Photo by Giorgio Benni