Alicja Kwade made sculptures and object that conveys

Result #1

Alicja Kwade made sculptures and object that conveys vernacular images and sounds. This show consisted of four pieces from her most recent series, Cinéma études, 2000. These are untitled works with images that have been cut up and pieced together, or pasted onto the wall, and then carefully aligned in various ways. It is a combination of a language and a video camera, but one that is much more elaborate than the other two, suggesting an almost surreal sense of language and order. Cinéma études, which is also the title of the exhibition, refers to a play written in three acts by the Polish playwright Kazimir Malevich. The plays eighty-eight-minute length is based on a description of an imaginary day at the cinema, when one of the films characters is shot and killed, and only the remains of the film are visible on the walls of the cinema. The act is carried out in the theatre only by the performers, and the ends of the play are never described. In the third act, a scene involving a plan to assassinate the movie star, the principal of the film, is disrupted by a plot of violence, which takes place in a secret cinema. The subsequent act is a story of the reenactment of the murder. A third act opens with the execution of a scapegoat, the architect and builder of the cinema, whom Malevich presents as a scapegoat. The scapegoat, who has given birth to a son, is punished by his son, who is also the architect. In the fourth act, the scapegoat is replaced by a woman. She is dressed in a costume of a peasant woman; her head is cut off at the neck, and she stares directly into the camera. This act is interrupted by a reappearance of the architect who, in a moment of crisis, is unable to carry out his plan, and who is killed by the actors.

Result #2

Alicja Kwade made sculptures and object that conveys vernacular, often just scraps of seemingly common objects, such as a wedding ring or a coin. Yet they are not fragments of the world, they are sculptures, as they are in the absence of a human presence to carry them out, as if they were some lost alien artifact from another time. In the installation Artforum, 2008, an enormous diamond-shaped stone (which can be used to carve a custom portrait) sits atop a pedestal, like some lost relic from another planet. It is part of a work entitled Alberich auf der Zwei (A Man for All Seasons), 2008, a photographic work in which the artists face appears in various states of wear and tear. The title is taken from a nineteenth-century English play, The Happiness of Versailles, in which the king is killed by his own son. The implication is that the king is always happy, but only when he is well on his feet.The exhibition was organized by the Kunstverein Munich in collaboration with Artforum, with the participation of the curator Manuela Guglielmi, and the gallery was decorated with a clean and minimalist style, with white walls and a black-and-white background, and white carpet. The space was shaped as a platform that could be used to present or display objects or installations. The black carpet was made from cardboard and covered with a layer of white vinyl, which lent the space an organic, almost naturalistic quality. The black carpet is made of the same material, and, like the diamond-shaped stone, is made of scraps of materials: staples, tape, string, beads, ribbons, buttons, nails, paper, newspaper, paperclips, paper clips, sheets of plastic, paper cups, pieces of paper, and, finally, paper plates, pieces of paper, plastic bags, and bits of paper. It is here that a large number of small fragments were gathered.

Result #3

Alicja Kwade made sculptures and object that conveys vernacular power and gestures. In this show she performed the elements of her composition as sculpture, emphasizing the artistic and social dimension of her work and expressing the different ways in which people relate to a world that is changing.The exhibition was divided into two parts: One part included photographs from the initial stage of her performance, and the other part, which was organized in response to the events of May, included photos from her performance. The photographs, taken from her performances, were not always successful, for they lacked the richness of light and the intensity of her performance. It is only in her photographs from the later stage of her performance that she succeeds in conveying the particularity of her presence. These images were the most revealing, for they were the most focused and also the most personal.The photos from the performance were the most disquieting. They showed a constant decline of dignity, as though she were losing her soul, her power, or her place in the world. She lost her identity as a performer, lost her voice, her connection with the audience. In the photographs, she seemed to be losing control of her actions, her ability to control her words and her actions. They showed her as a victim of her own despair, of her own isolation, and of her own alienation from the world. The photograph of her body after she fell from the rope that had been fastened to her neck and the surrounding trees, which had cut her dress, also showed her losing control of her actions. The rope had come to symbolize a sense of the forbidden, of her inability to commit to the social contract. She was becoming a stranger, a criminal. These images had a bitter, dehumanizing aspect, and it was the apparent conviction of these photographs that she was a criminal.The photographs from the performance that were shown, taken from the performance in May, were more successful. The photographs showed her in the act of performing, but they showed her in the process of performing.

Result #4

vernacular clutter and detritus. The work consists of brightly colored plastic tubs filled with paper trash, each bearing a single letter and the word DRAW (or, in this case, DRAW). One piece of paper has a picture of a woman with a cigarette, another a woman with a goatee, and a third a spool of paper bearing the word LAS VEGAS. The phrase itself is found in the spine of a book and refers to the image of the dead woman that was used as the starting point for a series of related sculptural works. The artists previously said that the work was inspired by a form of advertising—a combination of the advertisement and the erotic—and that the works, which are also titled Drawings, are also, in fact, colorful and therefore easily recognizable as such.This work is an example of what art can be: a way of bringing the outside world into the gallery and giving it a voice.

Result #5

Alicja Kwade made sculptures and object that conveys vernacular or shared histories of race, gender, and sexuality. The work in this exhibition, too, contains personal elements, but they are less noticeable than the personal aspects of the sculptures. This exhibition is more an acknowledgement of the intimate aspects of racial and gender identity and of the individual as an interlocutor of cultural difference.The shows title, Trans-Latin America, is taken from a work by Juan Gabriel Duran. It was designed by Raul Marroquin to evoke a transatlantic bond and is also meant to evoke the idea of the queerness of culture. The works conflation of cultural signifiers with the binary of black and white, a theme that has been trotted out many times, is not an easy one to swallow, but the exhibition made the possible connection explicit by presenting a diverse group of works, dating from 1959 to the present, in an environment of carefully arranged panels. Each piece evokes the present as a moment of change in identity, and therefore a reference point of potential growth.It is tempting to see a sort of lost nostalgia in the installation of these works. In fact, many pieces evoke the past with sly humor, as in the work of Brazilian artist Marcelino Torres. The work of Marcelino Torres, Queer Memoirs of a Black Female, is a set of photos that juxtapose images of a black woman, a white woman, and an African-American. In one image, a black woman stands in front of a white woman, both of whom are covered with a huge smiley face. In another, two white women wear large white plastic masks over their faces. Torres uses photography to suggest that all faces are alike, and that the connotations of difference, difference-making, and difference-imprisoning are universal.