Tai Kwun Contemporary is proud to present the inaugural solo exhibition in Hong Kong of the renowned contemporary artist Alicja Kwade titled Alicja Kwade: Pretopia. The exhibition showcases nine works that span different periods of the artist's career, blending various mediums including sculpture, sound, light, and performative installations. Drawing inspiration from abstract scientific and philosophical concepts, the exhibition delves into questions about reality and social structures.
Artist Alicja Kwade (born in Katowice, Poland, and currently based in Berlin) has crafted a perceptually extraordinary multiverse at Tai Kwun called Pretopia, a conceptual state preceding utopia. We see a clock turning in reverse, rocks floating in orbit, an anti-fragile chair, and clock hands faintly shifting its visibility with time. The exhibition offers a sensory experience in a sculptural environment that intertwines reality and illusion. It invites the audience to contemplate and reflect on their perception of time, space, systems, and the world.
Kwade created several new works tailored to the history and architecture of Tai Kwun. The centerpiece, a site-specific installation titled Fear–Fusion references the architectural design of the mid-19th-century women's prison at Tai Kwun's F Hall. Carefully arranging the prison's iron bars, the artist creates a subtle connection with other projects, constructing a scenography where reality intertwines with reflections in the bars, immersing the audience in a space where reality and illusion coexist. This exploration offers a new interpretation of the historical background of F Hall and the experience and the condition of entrapment and freedom.
The artist arranged clock hands along the walls of the exhibition space, re-establishing a system of spatial measurement with the hands serving as measuring tools. During weekends, a performative installation titled 218 Days, 9 Hours features performers measuring the walls with small clock hands, visualizing space through time.
Another significant commissioned mobile, Pretopian Skies, showcases the artist's mastery in reinterpreting local materials. Kwade blends the original stones and red bricks of Tai Kwun's prison walls with contemporary art, where the stones not only serve as raw materials for the construction of planets but also bear evidence of time and the history of the prison.
The red bricks are imprinted with the word "UTOPIA", laying the conceptual groundwork for this exhibition, Pretopia. In contrast with the prison environment, through precise calculation and arrangement, Pretopian Skies is an installation of floating stones gently swirling in the air, striving to maintain balance in an unstable state.
The other artworks—Gegen den Lauf (Against the Flow), The Condition (Antinomy) and Kommunikative Fernwirkung (Communicative Action at a Distance)—showcase Kwade's subversive approach to material exploration, challenging typical perceptions of everyday objects. Through these pieces, the artist prompts profound reflections on the perception of time, examining social constructions and offering fresh perspectives on viewing and understanding reality. Kwade invites the audience to immerse themselves in Pretopia, exploring the world through sensory and cerebral perception.
