Alicja Kwade Bends Reality and Time in the Halls of Pace Gallery
Alicja Kwade’s sculptures rarely play by the rules—her art transforms everyday materials into riddles about the universe. When she installed planet-like stones atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she conjured the cosmos right above Manhattan’s bustle, inviting viewers to question what’s real and what’s imagined.
Her 2019 piece, Against the Run, took the familiar face of a clock and made it uncanny: while the hands moved as expected, the numbers themselves jerked sideways, poking at the arbitrary systems we use to measure time. This playful disruption is a hallmark of Kwade’s practice, which draws on both scientific curiosity and philosophical inquiry.
Now joining Pace Gallery’s global roster, Kwade continues to blur the lines between perception and reality, inviting audiences to look twice at the world—and maybe even at time itself. In her hands, the ordinary becomes a portal to the extraordinary.
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