Gegebenenfalls die Wirklichkeit (Alicja) by Alicja Kwade

Art Düsseldorf

Past
Apr 10 – Apr 13, 2025
Düsseldorf

ART FAIR DETAILS

Art Düsseldorf
Booth D06
Apr 10 – 13, 2025

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Above: Alicja Kwade, Gegebenenfalls die Wirklichkeit (Alicja), 2019 © Alicja Kwade

Together with Mennour, we will jointly present a solo booth of works by Alicja Kwade featuring Gegebenenfalls die Wirklichkeit (Alicja) (2019), a monumental installation consisting of 35 copper boxes and exactly 259,025 pieces of paper—each representing a fragment of the artist's own DNA.

Some 785 of these pages will be arranged on the walls of the booth, with the majority displayed in the copper containers. With this work, Kwade gives visual form to her own genetic code: 99.9% of human DNA is identical, and only 0.1% makes us unique as individuals. It is precisely these deviations that are highlighted in bold on the pages of this work, turning the installation into a radically personal yet universal portrait.

Featured Works

Gegebenenfalls die Wirklichkeit (Alicja) (2019) exemplifies the artist’s continued investigation into the self, which culminated in her exhibition In Abwesenheit (In Absence) at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, in 2021. For this show, the artist printed her entire genome on 259,025 A4 sheets of paper. While 99.9% of all human DNA is identical, Kwade highlighted her individual and unique profile in bold text. With approximately 12,000 sheets hung floor to ceiling and the remainder placed in copper containers, the artist invited the public to take a piece of her home.

Selbstporträt by Alicja Kwade — Alicja Kwade, *Selbstporträt*, 2020, Selbstporträt, 2020 24 vials with the essential elements of the human body, framed (oxygen (O), carbon (C), hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), calcium ( Ca), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulphur (S), sodium (Na), chlorine (Cl), magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe), fluorine (F), zinc (Zn), silicon (Si), bromine( Br), copper (Cu), selenium (Se), manganese (Mn), iodine (I), nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co)), 122.5 cm × 100 cm × 5 cm × 5 cm (48-1/4" × 39-3/8" × 1-15/16" × 1-15/16")

100 days IV by Alicja Kwade — Alicja Kwade, *100 days IV*, 2024, Watch hands on cardboard, brass, framed, 151 cm × 151 cm × 4.7 cm (59-7/16" × 59-7/16" × 1-7/8")

Light Lessons (July/Berlin) by Alicja Kwade — Alicja Kwade, *Light Lessons (July/Berlin)*, 2025, brass watch hands on cardboard, 89.5 cm × 78.5 cm × 4.8 cm (35-1/4" × 30-7/8" × 1-7/8")

Light Lessons (October/Berlin) by Alicja Kwade — Alicja Kwade, *Light Lessons (October/Berlin)*, 2025, brass watch hands on cardboard, framed, 89.5 cm × 78.5 cm × 4.8 cm (35-1/4" × 30-7/8" × 1-7/8")

Alicja Kwade

Telos Tales

May 6 – Aug 15, 2025
Pace Gallery
New York

Alicja Kwade's first solo exhibition at Pace's New York gallery—on view from May 7 to August 15 at 508/510 West 25th Street—will feature new large-scale sculptures combining natural and architectural forms and ideas. Exploring the memory of natural phenomena and relationships between nature and man-made systems, the works in this presentation will speak to Kwade's poetic and critical engagement with scientific and philosophical concepts.

Opening Soon in Berlin

Reverse Alchemy

Dubuffet, Basquiat, Nava

May 2 – June 14, 2025
Pace Gallery
Berlin

This May, Pace will present the inaugural exhibition in its new space at Die Tankstelle—a converted 1950s gas station in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighborhood—which has transformed into a multifaceted gallery space, with offices and an exhibition space for Pace Gallery and Galerie Judin. The building will officially open to the public on Gallery Weekend Berlin, with Reverse Alchemy: Dubuffet, Basquiat, Nava presented by Pace, and an exhibition dedicated to Tom of Finland presented by Galerie Judin.

For the gallery’s inaugural exhibition at Die Tankstelle, Pace will bring together works on paper by three artists of different generations who have transgressed and disrupted the language of figuration: Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Nava. Anchored in Dubuffet’s “anti-cultural” celebration of art brut, this exhibition focuses on the medium of paper to explore how these artists perform a reverse alchemy, transmuting the gilded surfaces of “high art” back into its base elements—the raw, crude, and unhewn matter of mark-making—dismantling and exploding the figure in the act of rendering it.

Learn More

Museum Exhibitions in Germany

Yoshitomo Nara

Through April 27, 2025
Museum Frieder Burda
Baden-Baden, Germany

Yoshitomo Nara’s largest ever European retrospective is currently on view at Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden through April 27. The touring exhibition surveys four decades of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Renowned for his stylized depictions of wide-eyed, defiant figures, Nara has shaped contemporary painting with his instantly recognizable imagery. The exhibition is co-organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, and the Hayward Gallery, London. An expanded version of the show will open at the Hayward Gallery on June 10, 2025.

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Poetry of Light

Richard Pousette-Dart

May 17 – Sep 14, 2025
Museum Frieder Burda
Baden-Baden, Germany

This May, the Museum Frieder Burda will open Poetry of Light, surveying the work of Richard Pousette-Dart, a pioneering figure of Abstract Expressionism. Featuring around 140 works spanning six decades, the exhibition will offer a sweeping view of the artist’s multifaceted practice across painting, sculpture, and photography.