Extract from film of Against the Run (2012-14) Courtesy of Alicja Kwade.

Some artists use scientific findings as the starting point or subject of their work, involve science in the making of the work, or carry their own research in a manner parallel to scientific investigation. Polish-German artist Alicja Kwade does none of those things. Rather, she reads about science – along with philosophy and much else – because she’s passionately curious about the questions they ask, which she then considers from an artist’s perspective. We can look, then, at her takes on the difficulties of defining what is real, the subjectivity of time, the possibility of alternate worlds, and the origin of life. As she puts it: ‘I’m not doing science at all – because I am not a scientist. What I do is question the world, through a philosophical approach which uses moments from science to somehow understand the world. My question to myself – and the inspiration for my work – is from the same source as scientists might have. But my kind of work is completely different as I am in the lucky situation that I don’t need to be educated at all, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. The results don’t need to be ‘true’, they might just be my mind models. I’m trying to see what could be the structure of reality. Science is one way to find answers – other ways include philosophy and religion: mine excludes religion because it delivers so many answers instead of questions. When I read about quantum physics, it’s crazier than any science fiction you could invent - and this is where the pieces are coming from.’

*Installation view of ‘Silent Matter’ Courtesy of Alicja Kwade. Photo by Roman März © 2022*

What kind of questions does she ask? ‘How does macro connect to micro? What is it to describe myself? What is describing the chair I am sitting on? What is describing this room? Why do I believe this room is in a house? Why do I call this a city? Simple questions about things which are surrounding me, and those things might not just be physical but might be, say, social agreements. Why do we agree about time? Why do we agree on national borders? Why do we agree on value?’

*‘Adoption of specific properties’, 2022 - Wood, copper, bronze, 121 × 307 × 36.5 cm Courtesy of Alicja Kwade. Photo by Roman März © 2022.*

This type of questioning is apparent in ‘Adoption of specific properties’, one of the works in Kwade’s latest show at OMR, Mexico. The first of three circles looks like a branch, but one which defies natural laws. It’s been made into a circle: the branch becomes a platonic ideal, representing a mathematical formula that doesn’t exist in nature. Its apparent reality is hard won: Kwade explains that the real branch was 3D-scanned, then digitally formed into the circle – which is then milled out of the same kind of wood again, and the bark transplanted from one to the other. The bronze and copper pieces are then cast after the 3D scan. The copper, a pure metal, forms another perfect circle. The bronze, an alloy, stands in the middle as the intermediate result between natural and perfect – ‘a hybrid’, says Kwade. ‘We move through three different stages’, she explains, ‘from wood as the most natural representation of ‘the idea’ of a branch, then a transitional stage, and end with the metamorphosis to the pure element of copper. The work is about the constant questioning of when an object is beginning and ending and what defines it, and what it is made of. In this case, there is a transformation from one object to another, questioning the total reality. When do things begin, when do they end, and who defines them?’

*Portrait of Alicja Kwade* by Christian Werner

The circle also connects the idea of time, as it has no beginning or end. And time has been a constant theme across Kwade’s two decades of work. A relatively early example is ‘Gegen den Lauf’ (Against the Run), 2012-14, in which the second hand of a clock retains its position as , in her words, ‘the clock moves anti-clockwise when the second hand moves clockwise – it reminds me of Sisyphus pushing up the stone but never being able to complete the task’. It is ironic: ‘I have to laugh a little bit about the big drama of time, because it’s a very egoistic type of approach – we write and sing and paint and do so much research about time because it concerns us personally. It’s strange that people all over the world read a clock the same way, so if you change a little bit – though it works perfectly and you could still read the right time – it becomes a puzzle people struggle to read, which is kind of funny…’

*Impact (series I – V),* brass watch hands on cardboard, 218 x 152 x 5,5 cm Courtesy of the artist and OMR, Mexico City. Photograph by Ramiro Chaves.

Kwade has subsequently moved on to using the hands from clocks to make a series of works, with several recent examples in Mexico. Those, she indicates, ‘are more about the idea of order and how time is a system – but as Einstein said, the only test you can make of the system is that the clock is moving when you look at it!’ The series ‘Impact I – V’ is perhaps the simplest of these: the hours of a year are visualized by using clock hands in consecutive order thus forming a rhythmic, wavy pattern. The graphical description of light and sound waves turns out to emerge naturally from the arrangement, as if an unseen force – such as gravity, taking us back to Einstein via the concept of gravitational time dilation in his theory of relativity – is disrupting the system of time.

*‘Tropisches Jahr (2022)* , watch hands on cardboard, 254 × 184.2 × 7 cm Courtesy of Alicja Kwade. Photo by Roman März © 2022

‘Tropisches Jahr’ (Tropical Year) describes the period from the beginning of one spring to the next, and again the number of clock hands – variously-sized in this case - match the number of hours in a year. The title’s origin is in the Greek word ‘tropos’, meaning ‘a turn’, and designating a certain period of time between the same points in the repeating circle of seasons. Kwade explains this as ‘an attempt to describe time in a different order, to understand it more as a ‘turn’, a movement, something flexible and not an instance that you can push into the mould of defined notions and regularities. It shows the movement that keeps appearing in the universe, from the smallest to the largest entity known to us. In this specific representation, the work reminds us of galaxies and star clusters.’

*Tropisches Jahr’ (detail)*, shown courtesy of Alicja Kwade. Photo by Roman März © 2022

Off-site, Kwade has installed several versions of her ongoing ‘Siège du Monde’ (Seat of the World) series – showing at the same time, just a chair and a whole world. For her, says Kwade, ‘globes represent our planet, other possible planets, the human desire to conquer worlds, to elevate ourselves, to rule’. This also evokes the absurdity in human nature whereby we are always trying to conquer the world and require it to deliver certain truths. But, she adds, we are ‘stuck in one position, unable to move, as we are not yet able to move away from our spinning sphere. And we are even more stuck with ourselves, unable to leave the circle of our limited senses, always thrown back on ourselves’. Kwade allows us to sit on top of the world and ponder such matters.

L’ordre des mondes (Totem)’ (The order of the world) takes that further and introduces a reference to the ancient totems of Mexico, where the exhibition was made. Now the vertical placement of bronze casts of chairs with their respective solid stone spheres act as one symbolic throne standing on the shoulders of another throne, like a pillar of power. They are like different worlds that seem to stand on top of each other. ‘One world rises above the other, one ideology replaces the other’, says Kwade, ‘that could connect to multiple worlds – but also to the many options on our own planet – though we can’t leave, so that’s ruled out.’

*Silent Matter*, obsidian, lamp, shown courtesy of the artist and OMR, Mexico City. Photograph by Ramiro Chaves.

For the new body of work, ‘Silent Matter’, Kwade has sourced rare, large raw obsidian stones from Mexico – she says it was important to her to make as much as possible locally. The stones have been precisely sliced down the middle and highly polished to accentuate their black mirrored quality. That provides a deep, dark surface which Kwade combines with KAISER Idell lamps, placed facing the inside of the stone’s polished surface to reveal a dark reflection and only a faint halo of light emanating from the round head of the lamp. It seems as if the lamps are trying to illuminate the dark matter, provoking their own reflection and appearing as a ghostly double. Kwade sees Obsidian, made in the heart of our planet, as representing the symbolic power of the land and standing for knowledge. The failure of the lamps to illuminate matters then speaks to the limits of that knowledge. OMR’s text takes that thought further, proposing that ‘with the interaction between the two essential elements – light and matter – it seems that the lamps attempt to revive the heat of the volcano that birthed the stones, and in this sense the very heat and power of the Earth’s core, connected to the planetary origin of life. In addition, the obsidian stone’s deep black surface, together with the light, reminds us of the vast darkness of the Universe’. Kwade says she is ‘fascinated with the borders between science and suspicion’, and this mystical obsidian also suggests cultic actions, as the material ‘was once used to carve out gods and goddesses in this region of Mexico – secrets which the lamps apparently intend to illuminate, yet remain closed off from the viewer as the light turns away’.

So what does Alicja Kwade illumine through her thought experiments? The limits of our knowledge, yes; also the connections between different ways of thinking, scientific methodology being one of those but needing to be supplemented by others; and the conventions lying behind how science feeds into everyday life, and how those conventions might be challenged. Kwade takes a sceptical view of the fictional realities human kind has constructed on top of the objective realities of the world: nations, gods, time, money, value. We are led to question them in turn through thought experiments presented in elegant and witty forms. Together, they make the case for another way of understanding the world: through art.

Alicja Kwade’s solo show ‘Silent Matter’ ran at Galeria OMR, Mexico, 6 Feb – 25 March 2023.

In addition, her website provides an excellent overview of her work.

ALICJA KWADE: QUESTIONING THE WORLD