SAN GIMIGNANO.- Two years after her solo exhibition in its San Gimignano space, Galleria Continua once again presents the work of Alicja Kwade, one of today’s most influential contemporary sculptors. The exhibition, titled Vestigia, features works spanning different periods of the artist’s career, including some bronze sculptures from her most recent research.
These pieces reflect on the cyclical, linear, and ultimately elusive nature of temporal experience, and its interdependence with natural and artificial systems. Some works appear as metaphorical traces—memories and experiences that weave together past, present, and future.
Others, like Inner Image (Finallyfound), preserve traces of lost civilizations. These works originate from a selection of the artist’s personal belongings —an iPhone, keys, sunglasses— encased within a block of schist. Their disappearance in the present and imagined archaeological rediscovery in an undefined future are materialized in this form. When, at some distant point in time, these fossilized objects are uncovered, neither their original function nor their names will be remembered; they will appear as unknown artifacts—timeless and mysterious.
The exhibition opens with two large sculptures, both titled Archibiont (2025). These works consist of solid, geometric, linear structures in dark metal that unexpectedly transform into organic forms. They blur boundaries and reveal recurring patterns found in nature- evoking an underlying systematic structure, like a hidden blueprint inherent in the world: copper-green tree bark and bronze antlers. Architecture, biology, metaphysics, and philosophy inspire Alicja Kwade’s new works. These are sculptures in a state of transformation, recalling Aristotle’s theory of hylomorphism-a philosophical concept exploring the relationship between matter, form, and existence within a natural body. The tensions within the supernatural elements of Archibiont allude to higher forces, universal laws, beauty, and chaos, which are in constant motion across earth and space.
Trait Transference (2024): a rusted mirror hangs on the wall, its reflective surface bearing the marks of time. On the floor lies a metal slab, similarly altered by the passage of time and the forces of corrosion. Together, they create a visual dialogue between the ephemeral and the enduring, inviting reflection on the transience of existence. With this work, the artist reminds us that art serves as a means to question and explore profound ideas about the fabric of reality, while simultaneously challenging and expanding our perception.
Change, reorientation, and the possibility of transformation are the themes Kwade explores in another work on view, Kehrtwende (2021): a curved fragment of a wooden handrail mounted on the wall. Separated from its architectural context, this simple object takes on new meaning it marks a turning point, both literally and metaphorically (the title means “U-turn” or “reversal”). The artist invites us to pause and reflect on the moments in life when a change in direction occurs whether in thought, in time, or in physical space. As in much of her work, Kwade questions our perception of reality, trans-forming a familiar form into a silent but powerful reflection on movement, transition, and the structure of experience.
Alicja Kwade (1979, Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin. Widely known to the Italian public thanks to her participation in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, Kwade is internationally recognized for her sculptures, large-scale public installations, films, photographs, and works on paper that explore perception, science, and society. Her work is grounded in reflection, repetition, and the deconstruction of everyday objects a multifaceted practice that investigates the concepts of time, space, and reality, opening new perspectives on the world.
Her recent solo exhibitions include those at: Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Dallas Contemporary; Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours; Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; YUZ Museum, Shanghai; and de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam.
Her works are held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, among other international institutions. Her public sculptures can be found around the world: at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts; as well as in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and other countries. In 2015–2016, the Public Art Fund commissioned Against the Run, an installation for Central Park in New York.
In 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize in Visual Arts and is currently a fellow at the Villa Massimo in Rome.
