Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade has been selected to create a site-specific installation for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. The Roof Garden Commission: Alicja Kwade, ParaPivot will be on view from April 16 through October 27, 2019.
“The Met’s Roof Garden Commission is a catalyst for bold artistic intervention and the continuous rethinking of a unique space, and it’s with great anticipation that we look forward to unveiling Alicja Kwade’s project this spring,” said Max Hollein, Director of The Met. “The setting—perched atop the Museum’s vast collection and set against New York City’s iconic skyline and Central Park—presents a compelling site for Kwade, whose works offer an expansive view of the history of art and science.”
The Roof Garden Commission: Alicja Kwade, ParaPivot was conceived by the artist in consultation with Sheena Wagstaff, Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Kelly Baum, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Curator of Contemporary Art, both of The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. It is the seventh in a series of site-specific commissions for the outdoor space.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a book published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. The exhibition is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1979, Alicja Kwade lives and works in Berlin. Raised by a cultural scientist mother and a conservator and art historian father, she grew up in Poland and, later, Germany. In 1999, Kwade entered the Universität der Künste in Berlin to study sculpture, and three years later she began showing in solo and group exhibitions, achieving a remarkable degree of critical success in a relatively short period of time. Although Kwade has also made videos and sound art, she is best known for her sculptures and installations, most of which are designed with specific spaces in mind. With equal parts poetry and critical acumen, her work not only reflects on the nature of time and perception; it also investigates the structures and theories we have adopted to understand the physical universe in which we reside. The resulting works are elegant, astute, and highly experiential.
Kwade’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including Out of Ousia, at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen (2018); Medium Median, at Whitechapel Gallery in London (2016); and The Void of the Moment in Motion, at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (2015). Her work has also been featured in such prestigious exhibitions as the 57th Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva (2016), and the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Forming in the Pupil of an Eye. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at a museum in the United States.