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Icons, pallets, Mars melons & planets: The artistic wonderland of Alicja Kwade

Alicja Kwade, born in Katowice, Poland in 1979, has lived in Germany since 1986. From 1999 to 2005, she studied at the Berlin University of the Arts. She is one of the best known and sought-after artists of her generation who, to date, has had over 60 solo exhibitions worldwide. The concept artist and sculptor, who has been honoured with numerous awards, most recently the Hektorpreis from the Kunsthalle Mannheim, lives and works in Berlin. In 2018, she held second position in the ‘Art Compass’ ranking of the “stars of tomorrow” in the Capital business magazine, making her one of the “most promising young artists” on a list of 100 names.

Alicja Kwade, TRAFO Szczecin, 27.11.2015

Urszula Usakowska-Wolff

Paradox manuscripts

You do not have to know anything about the space-time curvature, the twin paradoxes or the wormholes to be able to enjoy the ambivalent and paradox world of this artist. It is a world of simple and familiar things - things that are so recognisable to us that we do not have to think about their functionality and their purpose and, for that reason, are astonished when they appear in a different form: bent, dismantled into individual parts and pulverised. Another theme that Alicja has explored since 2006 is the uniqueness and singularity of the individual. She copied out manuscripts of famous or not so famous people in her own hand, including a letter from the inventor physicist and electronic engineer Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), changed his first name slightly and had the result appraised and certified by a Munich graphologist. And look what happened: he certified that the writer of the letter was male and middle-aged, had a sense of humour, has a tendency to be excessive and wasteful, in short, the writer had a “creative and vibrant personality.” The four-part paper “Beeing Nicola Tesla” is clear evidence of the fact that Alicja Kwade, whose first name is pronounced with an s outside Poland, goodness knows why, could be Tesla’s present-day doppelganger, Alisja. Several such letters from the series “Beeing…” were presented in the Neuen Berliner Kunstverein under the German title “Sein...” in 2018. The question of identity will also be at the centre of her exhibition “In Abwesenheit” [“In absentia”], which will hopefully open at the Berlinischen Galerie – Museum für Moderne Kunst on 18 September 2021 after being postponed several times due to the pandemic. The exhibition, as stated on the website, “is based on the more recent works of Alicja Kwade, which can be read as self-portraits in the broader sense. Kwade examines the question of how a person and their physical presence in the room can be described: via their own heartbeat, their individual DNA code or through the chemical elements which make up the person.”