Artists

Alicja Kwade

Press release

In her sculptural work and more extensively in her exhibitions, that she arranges with the most exquisite precision, Alicja Kwade makes daily objects cohabit with forms created from natural materials: stone, wood, metals and various other materials. As she explains, her practice is about “the natural and social forces that fashion our lives and our perceptions of reality.” Though her work is often described by emphasising what it owes to the field of physics, a source she cherishes and celebrates with plays on balance and the meticulous organisation of gravitational forces, it shouldn’t be reduced to that in any way whatsoever. “I am not a physicist”, she insists (nor a geologist, it should be added). Let’s go back on that short and effective formula: “the natural and social forces”.

Without determining the nature of those “hybrids” that dominate so much contemporary philosophy, from Bruno Latour to Timothy Morton, Alicja Kwade’s work presents, as open questions, visual and sculptural situations in which, far from being in conflict, thosae forces combine and unite, which can be observed in the materiology shown by her work. The choice of materials is extremely meticulous, informed by their specific history, their provenance as well as the symbolics they carry. In fact, what differentiates natural and synthetic materials (or, to say it differently, materials produced by “natural” or “social” forces)? To what degree of transformation do the sculpted piece of wood, the cut or polished stone stop be considered as natural? Does an alloy like brass, a product of human society if there ever was one, come closer to a natural state once it oxidises?