While often exploring scientific and philosophical principles, Alicja Kwade's art is chiefly focused on profound and fundamental concepts such as perception, light, and the nature of reality. Her works possess an aura of cosmic mystery with humanistic reflection as they seek to break down complex structures into digestible parts.
“When you open-up a system like time, for example, and begin to see how it works graphically, it can become a kind of formal or mathematical structure that creates these waves, almost like light waves. Time can feel natural when you’re in it, but of course it’s very much a product of extrinsic social agreement.”(INTERVIEWS: ALICJA KWADE, Alicja Kwade on adapting her practice during quarantine, by Jonah Goldman Kay, June 12, 2020)
Kwade is convinced that there is no absolute and unchangeable "common sense" in the world. Rather everything is dependent on the perspective of the observer and the context in which it exists. Deeply interested in alternative systems of reality in other dimensions, Kwade reveals the subjective and constructive nature of reality. In her eyes, sculptures and installations are malleable voids that exist in countless types of transformation and temperament. With this unconventional practice, Kwade challenges conventional thinking around how we understand observation and perception.
Wood, glass, concrete, stone, and other materials are stripped of the functions established by humans and returned to their most fundamental purpose: gravity, density, length, distance, disintegration and recombination. With a philosophical tone, Kwade seeks to ask: how to measure and assign value to reality?