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303 GALLERY Artforum (March 2013)

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Alicja Kwade, "The Heavy Weight of Light"

Installation view of Alicja Kwade, “The Heavy Weight of Light” at Harris Lieberman

Time Out says Fri Jan 4 2013 Like a magician, Berlin artist Alicja Kwade manipulates time, light and perception, conjuring thoughts of the beyond or the possibilities of one. Though her themes are well-worn, the works, sustained by her playful and thoughtful sensibility, entrancingly reverberate off one another. Kwade draws us into a space where things aren’t quite what they seem: where clocks running faster or slower than normal elongate or shrink the passage of time, while sculptures made of inflexible materials bend, as if some supernatural force had intervened to make the impossible happen. Illusions and sleights of hand are prevalent. A straight steel rod leans against a mirror, its reflection appearing to waver, but it’s just a mirage, the result of a concavity at the point of contact. Nearby, two lit globes on the floor seem to be reflected numerous times within a freestanding screen of glass, another trick of the eye aided by two other unlit fixtures placed on the opposite side. The Minimalist austerity of these works is offset by the sonorous ticking of two vintage Art Deco clocks on the wall, and by an installation in an adjacent room, Future in the Past, in which eight pocket watches showing different times dangle from the ceiling, each one connected by a wire to an individual speaker on the floor. A beautiful reminder that “time is of the essence,” as well as an invitation to take the time to reflect on time, this piece—along with the others in the show—is focused and ruminative in a way that much art simply isn’t these days.—Nana Asfour

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December 20, 2012

Alicja Kwade: ‘The Heavy Weight of Light’ By KEN JOHNSON

Harris Lieberman 508 West 26th Street Chelsea Through Jan. 12 Alicja Kwade, a cerebrally imaginative artist who lives in Berlin, produces elegantly understated works that are as much thought experiments as sculptures. One piece here is a folding screen of clear glass panels with electric globe lights on the floor on either side. When you walk around to the other side of the screen you discover that the globes there are different: one is solid glass and the other sandstone. Because the spheres have been placed exactly the same distance from the glass on either side, the reflections of the electric lights obscure the reality of those on the other side. Now you see them, now you don’t. Elsewhere are two institutional-type clocks on opposite walls, the second hand of one going faster than normal while that of the other is going slower. A small rear gallery has an installation consisting of antique pocket watches with closed lids hanging by gold chains. Each timepiece has a sensor attached that connects to a speaker on the floor. The air is filled with a curiously satisfying chorus of ticking. Meanwhile, against a wall between the two offbeat clocks is a subtly surrealistic array of slender, upright objects: lengths of pipe, wood and other rigid materials. Near the wall’s base, they bend gracefully as if somehow elasticized and extend out along the floor. All of this invites us to ponder how closely our perceptual and cognitive habits conform to things as they truly are. Does anyone really know what time it is? A version of this review appeared in print on December 21, 2012, on page C33 of the New York edition with the headline: Alicja Kwade: ‘The Heavy Weight of Light’.

303 GALLERY Frieze (May, 2012), pp 176

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303 GALLERY by KIMBERLY BRADLEY

February 28, 2012

Alicja Kwade’s “In Circles” JOHANN KÖNIG, Berlin February 18–March 17, 2012

“Round and round she goes; where she stops, nobody knows.” This little rhyme popped into my mind as I entered Johann König’s gallery for Alicja Kwade’s current solo show, “In Circles.” A mad array of 54 industrial and everyday objects loosely arranged in concentric rings fills the gallery’s front space in a large-scale installation titled Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (2012), which beckons to the viewer walk along each ring to see what he or she can see. It’s easy to trace the curves in Kwade’s perfectly placed bent tubing and piping, but it takes a second to realize that even the installation’s larger, solid objects—a door, a window, mirrors, iron gates, sheets of metal, and even a bicycle—not only travel on her orbits’ paths, but have also been altered (in some cases just barely) to conform to them. The white door’s slight curvature is hardly noticeable until you’re at close range. The imposing rusty gates are generously rounded. There’s an almost imperceptible bend to a door with an oval mirror. A few copper pipes in the outermost rings disappear into the gallery wall; in the very center of the installation, a two-euro coin, propped up on its rim, and a sharply curved sheet of metal face each other, mysteriously. Die Gesamtheit aller Orte loosely translates into “the entirety of all places,” but Kwade spans eras and movements here, too. She deftly cherry-picks art-historical references, connecting to a Duchampian concept of the Readymade, or even Surrealism—her curved mirrors are a subtler take on the very bent mirrors (which might be echoes of Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks) that she has shown in previous exhibitions, such as Andere Bedingdungen in 2009. Some of the sheets of curved metal look like flimsier, Ikea-esque versions of Richard Serra’s giant sculptures. Encircled by a round ring of wood, the two-euro coin in the middle of this constellation also makes anyone familiar with the Polish-born, Berlin-educated Kwade’s prior work wonder whether she’s again playing with concepts of value and perception: especially in her 2008 solo exhibition “Von Explosion zu Ikonen” at the Hamburger Bahnhof under the auspices of winning the Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture —Kwade had cut simple shale into faceted objects resembling precious stones or applied gold leaf to briquettes of coal to transform them into something that only looks rich.

1 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte, 2012.

2 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte, 2012.

3 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (detail), 2012.

This time, though, what seems most important are not the objects themselves or even what the artist has done to them, but the alternate world she has created with them. Her neatly arranged distortions of the quotidian are like a found-object bizarro-world solar system, a Berlin-bohemian crop circle or labyrinth, like in Alice’s Wonderland. For all its illusion and effect (how did she get that door to bend like that?), the installation evokes a sense of mild discomfort … and, like so much these days in the art world and beyond, takes up Freud’s concept (via psychoanalyst Ernst Jentsch) of das Unheimliche, or the Uncanny—”the opposite of what is familiar”; something that both attracts and repels. On the other hand, it could very well be that it doesn’t run that deep. Maybe poking at our brains while making us walk in circles might be all that Kwade wants to do with us. The installation definitely draws its viewers in, but it might be even more unsettling—and arguably more intriguing— if Kwade had taken a more minimal route: rather than having things so neatly traced out, literally, on the floor, what if she’d given us fewer breadcrumbs? What she’d lose in centripetal force, she’d gain in singular impact. (It so often seems that current younger artists are almost afraid of giving the viewer too much to figure out or “do.” Is this to make sure everyone… “gets it”?) More mysterious is Kwade’s single-channel video Kreisel (Inception) (2012), playing in the gallery’s back space on a simple black monitor set on the floor. The space is otherwise empty. The video shows a heavy metal top spinning slowly on a black background, reflecting a single light source and underscored with a loud buzz that stops only when the loop stops for a moment and starts again. The top never decelerates enough to topple over. What does it mean? Round and round we go, but maybe it’s really about the spinning itself, and not guessing where things might stop. Don’t think, just watch. As Robert Storr recently said in reference to Ellsworth Kelly—yet another artist who surprises us with almost imperceptible, unsettling curvatures in his sculptures and paintings—”[...] there is no message, only experience.”

Kimberly Bradley is a writer based in Berlin.

4 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (detail), 2012.

5 Alicja Kwade, Kreisel (Inception), 2012.

1 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte, 2012. 54 parts: metal plates, metal pipes, metal mesh, perforated metal, metal rails, steel plates, steel bar, copper tubes, brass rings, brass rods, Euro coins, wood moldings, wood panels, glass panels, mirrors, door, bricks, bicycle, window, lacquer, rust. Height 105 inches, diameter 551.25 inches. All images courtesy of

303 GALLERY 303 GALLERY Johann Kรถnig, Berlin. 2 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte, 2012. 54 parts: metal plates, metal pipes, metal mesh, perforated metal, metal rails, steel plates, steel bar, copper tubes, brass rings, brass rods, Euro coins, wood moldings, wood panels, glass panels, mirrors, door, bricks, bicycle, window, lacquer, rust. Height 105 inches, diameter 551.25 inches. 3 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (detail), 2012. 54 parts: metal plates, metal pipes, metal mesh, perforated metal, metal rails, steel plates, steel bar, copper tubes, brass rings, brass rods, Euro coins, wood moldings, wood panels, glass panels, mirrors, door, bricks, bicycle, window, lacquer, rust. Height 105 inches, diameter 551.25 inches. 4 Alicja Kwade, Die Gesamtheit aller Orte (detail), 2012. 54 parts: metal plates, metal pipes, metal mesh, perforated metal, metal rails, steel plates, steel bar, copper tubes, brass rings, brass rods, Euro coins, wood moldings, wood panels, glass panels, mirrors, door, bricks, bicycle, window, lacquer, rust. Height 105 inches, diameter 551.25 inches. 5 Alicja Kwade, Kreisel (Inception), 2012. Still from HD video with sound. 2 minutes, 19 seconds.

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Alicja Kwade BERLIN, at Johann Konig

by David Ulrichs Alicja Kwade’s exhibition at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof last year, on the occasion of winning the 2008 Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture, confirmed—for better or worse—the reputation of the Polishborn sculptor. At 30, she has already become associated with luxe products like mirrored clocks, Kaiser Idell lamps and objects embellished with gold leaf or a cut diamond. Her first solo show at Johann König, bearing the title “Grenzfälle Fundamentaler Theorien” (Limit Cases of Fundamental Theories), introduced new materials and objects, but her sensibility and guiding ideas remain consistent. Although Der Tag ohne Gestern (The Day without Yesterday), 2009, occupied the gallery’s largest space and was the exhibition’s focus, it was not the most engaging work shown. Reminiscent of one of Olafur Eliasson’s quasiscientific experiments, it suffered from a disproportion between the technology employed and the esthetic result. Kwade’s installation consisted of 11 loudspeakers amplifying and projecting the otherwise inaudible noise made by the room’s neonstrip lighting onto 11 curved plates of lacquered and polished steel. Each sheet’s curvature is modeled on an individual sine wave function, resulting in a sound wave interference pattern that took viewers “by the ear” and moved them from one component to the next. While apparently referring to a theory in speculative physics proposing an 11dimensional reality, The Day without Yesterday did little more than remind us of the artist’s soft spot for shiny, mirrored surfaces. But treasures are found where we least expect them—here, at the intersection of floor and wall, where a mysterious sheet of curved

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glass lay furled like a fallen piece of paper. A glimpse at the ceiling raised the question, could one of the panels of the skylight have sailed down to the floor like a leaf? While there was no missing windowpane to support the conjecture, it is precisely this kind of unreasonable thought, wherein we imagine a malleable and indestructible sheet of glass, that illustrates the power of this young artist’s work. Time and again, Kwade leads the viewer to assume impossibilities that reach far beyond simple trompe l’oeil. Outside the gallery two silvercolored Nissan Micras were parked at an angle, mirroring each other. A rusty dent, caused by a road accident, above one of the car’s headlights is mimicked by a meticulously fabricated dent in the other car. Their juxtaposition created a headlong collision between an accident and its reenactment, and lured viewers to position themselves between the two matched elements—the space that the artist in many other works has reserved for a mirror. Photo: Alicja Kwade: The Day without Yesterday (Dimensions 111), 2009, steel, black varnish, speakers and mixed mediums, 11 parts; at Johann König.

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Alicja Kwade

JOHANN KÖNIG Dessauerstr. 6-7 September 15–November 7

Alicja Kwade, Der Tag ohne Gestern (Dimension 1–11) (The Day Without Yesterday [Dimension 1–11]), 2009, steel, black varnish, speakers, mixer, microphones, neon tubes, dimensions variable. Installation view.

Three works summon a powerful sense of the uncanny in Alicja Kwade’s latest exhibition, “Border Cases of Fundamental Theories.” The Polish-born, Berlin-based artist’s pair of installations and video share a Minimalist appearance, and together they evoke disquieting impressions. Kwade’s video captures a few rocks falling slowly through pitch-black space. In reality, the stones are mere pebbles. Yet Kwade has filmed them with a high-speed camera that magnifies the objects to massive proportions on the gallery wall to create the unnerving sense that these simple, harmless stones are meteors plummeting toward an unknown and possibly fatal destination. The creepy experience of watching the film is accentuated by the audio that emanates from the installation adjacent to the screening space. Here, Kwade has assembled eleven large, shiny blacklacquered curved steel plates that divide the space. In front of each one she has placed a simple black speaker. Visually, the effect is neat and nearly soothing. But each speaker is connected to the fluorescent lightbulbs in the ceiling, amplifying electromagnetic waves against the uniquely shaped structures. As the sounds echo around the room, one feels a physically sickening sense of disordered anxiety and panic, which stands in sharp contrast to the work’s banal, benign materials and cool, elegant look. Less physical but perhaps even more effective is Kwade’s unassuming outdoor installation. At the gallery’s entrance, the artist parked two silver Nissan Micras next to each other. On first look the cars seem identical, but closer examination reveals that they are actually mirror images, with steering wheels on opposite sides and matching dents in their fenders. Without any overt justification, the sight generates a sense of dread, as well as admiration for Kwade’s pitch-perfect tweaking of reality. — Ana Finel Honigman