Die bewegte Leere des Moments

In her conceptual work Alicja Kwade examines which scientific models and philosophical ideas are at the root of our subjective perception of reality. To do this, she frequently creates surreal-looking spatial sculptures and installations. The relationships between subject and object and between movement in time and space are general starting points which Alicja Kwade addresses in a focused and unsettling fashion.

Thus her installation in the Kunsthalle’s atrium illustrates the abstract relationship between time, space, and object by means of a uniformly rotating clock and a stone. Both items are attached to chains and, driven by a motor winch, circle above the heads of the public. The mutually related movement generates a visual axis between the two objects, and it is here that the “moving emptiness of the moment” asserts itself. Referencing the orbits of a planetary system, the shiny clock with its two-sided face and the heavy, rough stone create a constellation which reflects the universal relation between the material and the immaterial, while the monotone ticking of the clock mechanism acoustically strengthens the infinite quality of the circular movement.