The Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade, 1979 born in the Polish city of Katowice, had in recent years a spectacular career. Her breakthrough came in 2008 with the first solo show in a major museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin. Since then Kwade is well represented in the national exhibition industry, for example, this year with a solo exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover (until 24.05.). There is room for more international attention.
Her gallery network too seems upgradeable, so if this includes powerful names such as Johann König Galerie in Berlin ans Galleri Christina Wilson in Copenhagen.
Alicja's brother Martin Kwade operates by the side of a very successful project space in Berlin, called KWADRAT.
Profile:
For the first institutional solo exhibition of Alicja Kwade, which is being realized in collaboration with the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, the former resident of Hannover is planning a series of new works. The artist plays most often with the productive tension between her works' surface texture, which recalls Minimal Art, and the everyday aspect of their original utilization. Kwade makes deliberate use here of the medium of installation and integrates found objects and everyday items therein. Thus mirrors and desk lamps are electroplated, metallized or enameled in elaborate procedures. Everyday objects are thereby transformed into artifacts which cannot deny their original functions but can no longer fulfill them. (Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover)
