PARIS.- 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 domi- nate 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?
The obvious interest of the artist for time, that ungraspable and not at all material thing, also enables her to combine those forces not so antagonistic after all. This amalgamation constitutes the core of this exhibition entitled “Blue Days Dust” which revolves, work after work, around that notion without ever limiting it or stabilising it. Time in it is subjective, cosmic, cyclic, homogenised, relative and absolute. It is experienced, measured and observed through the evolution of some physical processes. Several sculptures, for example, refer to the principle of the quantification of time, like a clock, an hourglass, but also a large basin inspired by concrete structures found in cemeteries, which provide water for watering cans. The tap drips at a rhythm set on that of the passing seconds and minutes, like water, creating a visual and sound experience. Lapis and obsidian, placed directly on the floor, or pieces of granite levitating in their traps of resin, take us to a fathomless time, like sophisticated vehicles with the potential to short-circuit the ages. Further on the samaras, fruits of the maple tree and seasonal products, symbolise a vision of cyclic time. A subjective approach is added to that series of works.
“This exhibition,” Alicja Kwade explains, “is to be seen in the perspective of our existence as a physical thing for a limited period of time on this planet, and what it means to be or not matter, to be or not solid.” Each work presents us with a questioning of a philosophical nature on the matter, that of our human bodies, obviously, but also the matter of which the natural and social world in which we live is made. In that setting of its various states and its transformations, the granite and the lapis-lazuli play the part of veterans by taking us back to distant geological eras from which men were absent. On the opposite spectrum, the connected, electric and sound installations function with rare metals torn from the bowels of the earth, but also with composites that are the technical gems of our time. And like domestic objects, they anchor us in the present, domestic time.
Between an extreme attention to the materiality of the world and the acute awareness of its future disappearance, “Blue Days” Dust is a perfect introduction to the paradoxical materialism of the artist.
— Jill Gasparina
Translation : Catherine Petit & Paul Buck
