Alicja Kwade : Is perception reality ?
“My muse is the blank space, the not-knowing and not-understanding. I attempt to acknowledge nothingness as real. If nothing is real, there are only possibilities.”
- Alicja Kwade
Teleportation (Kerzen), 2010
Appearing as one of the most striking artworks presented in the Arsenale at the 2017 Venice Biennale, the work of Alicja Kwade plays with the alteration of vision and perception. The work of the Polish artist based in Berlin revolves around the idea that space and time are malleable and that they can be used to alter the comprehension of our surroundings and thus alter our comprehension of reality.
Revolution, 2017
Through the use of lights, mirrors,and raw natural materials like wood, glass and metal, Kwade creates different kind of structures that are morphologically hard to grasp at first glance. She stretches the gap existing between feelings and facts.
“The conventions we use to structure, count, and name reality, in order to live and function together as a flock of seven-and-a-half billion, concern me. My efforts to understand and represent something I can barely grasp, and my failure to do so, bring forth my work.”
- Alicja Kwade
Lampe (Kaiser Idell), 2014
Kwade extends our conception of material reality by creating sculptures and installations that seem almost hallucinatory. The artist questions the relation between what we see and what we know. In an approach reminiscent of those of scientifics and philosophers of the 20th century, the artist tries to bring out uncertainty in order to reassess the false or unintelligible evidences regarding the essence of human life.
We believe in things that we do not necessarily understand.
Der Tag ohne Gestern (Dimension 1-11), 2009
