Alicja Kwade: Pretopia

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 installation, together with newly commissioned installations tailored to the history and architecture of Tai Kwun’s F Hall. Drawing inspirations from abstract scientific and philosophical concepts, the exhibition delves into questions about reality and social structures. Alicja Kwade: Pretopia is on view from 10 January to 6 April 2025 as part of Tai Kwun Contemporary’s new Breakthrough series. Additionally, Kwade’s first site-specific installation in Hong Kong, Waiting Pavilions, is currently on view at the Prison Yard until late 2026.

Artist Alicja Kwade (born in Katowice, Poland, and currently based in Berlin), is one of her generation’s leading contemporary artists. Leveraging her expansive experience in outdoor public sculptures and installations, Kwade 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 three new works tailored to the history and architecture of Tai Kwun. The centrepiece, a site-specific installation titled Fear–Fusion references the architecture of the mid-20th century women's prison once housed at Tai Kwun's F Hall. Carefully arranging the prison's iron bars, the artist creates a subtle connection with other works, 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, as well as 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 and 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 intellectual perception.

Alicja Kwade: Pretopia is part of Tai Kwun Contemporary’s new Breakthrough series, which underlines emerging artistic positions through solo presentations, commissions, and innovative formats. For Spring 2025, Alicja Kwade: Pretopia is presented alongside Hu Xiaoyuan: Veering and Maeve Brennan: Records. These solo exhibitions by three female artists explore materials and storytelling through diverse approaches.

During the exhibition, Tai Kwun Contemporary will host a series of diverse public and education programmes, including Tai Kwun Conversations moderated by the curator Louiza Ho with Kwade, the Hong Kong artist Kingsley Ng and the curator Grace Cheng. They will explore the relationship between public art and the community. Teacher’s Morning! and Teacher’s Workshop, as well as Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary, will offer insights into the artists' exploration of material and narrative. Lastly, Guided Tour: Who’s Next? invites docents to share their perspectives on the artist's creative process, techniques, and sources of inspiration with the audience.

Apart from the exhibition, Alicja Kwade has created her first site-specific installation in Hong Kong, Waiting Pavilions, specially commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary for the Prison Yard. The work transforms the landscape of the Prison Yard, investigating the passage of time in the setting of a former prison, bridging the past and present within this landmark heritage site. This public art commission is on view from 20 December 2024 until late 2026.

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