At Frieze Los Angeles, 303 Gallery will exhibit a solo presentation by Alicja Kwade. This presentation brings together a group of works that the artist has been developing and refining continuously over many years, reflecting, with a certain irony, on capitalism, optimization and the circulation of goods, time and value. Familiar objects, fruits and global symbols appear altered in weight, function or meaning, questioning how value is produced, transported and perceived, not only in the global economy but also within the art market itself.
In the sculpture “Heavy Heard”, these questions are distilled with pointed clarity. A marble sphere, readable as a symbol of the world, rests inside a luxurious Balenciaga handbag cast in bronze. Weight and value, world and commodity, intimacy and globality collide directly. The work operates through precise structural irony. The iconic accessory becomes the bearer of an oversized burden.
At the center of the presentation are three sculptures from the “Mono Monde” series. At first glance, they resemble the widely produced Monobloc chairs that are typically light, stackable, and functional. Only upon closer inspection does the disruption become apparent. The chairs, cast in bronze, carry large stone spheres or stand upon them, hinting at other possibilities, other planets, other Earths.
Bronze cast, deformed fruits as well as champagne bottles made of lead further extend this constellation. Forms that promise lightness, pleasure, and consumption become heavy, unusable, and contradictory through their materiality. Only on a second glance does the illusion reveal itself. The familiar slips away from expectation and demands a conscious reassessment. The fruits appear almost inverted, as if they were different, as if they came from other planets or were nourished by several trees at once. Peels and fragments of fruit also appear, elements normally perceived as waste but here elevated into a different status, playfully and ironically referring to quantum physics, as the smallest possible unit of a drink, almost like a self portrait as a "string."
On the wall, the work “Gegen den Lauf” undermines the linear concept of time. The clock refuses the familiar direction of reading and calls progress and chronology into question. The clock is altered so that as the seconds hand moves forward in a clockwise direction, the clock physically moves backwards in a counterclockwise direction.
With the curved pallet “Used and Tired”, an iconic work from Kwade’s oeuvre, a central object of global logistics comes even more sharply into focus. As a symbol of transport, efficiency, and the rationalization of commodity flows, the pallet is stripped of its function and sculpturally exaggerated. Its subtle curvature and title point to exhaustion, time, and strain, both within the material itself and within the systems it represents.
