NEW YORK, NY.- Pace is presenting Alicja Kwade: Telos Tales, an exhibition of new work by Alicja Kwade, at its 508 and 510 West 25th Street galleries in New York. Featuring never-before-seen monumental sculptures alongside new mixed media works, this marks Kwade’s debut solo show at Pace in New York since the gallery began representing her in 2023. On view from May 7 to August 15, the exhibition coincides with this year’s edition of Frieze New York.


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Kwade is known internationally for sculptures, large-scale public installations, films, photographs, and works on paper that engage poetically and critically with scientific and philosophical concepts. Through a distinctive vocabulary encompassing reflection, repetition, and the manipulation of everyday objects and natural materials, the artist raises questions about structures and systems that govern and shape our daily lives. In her contemplative works, which dismantle boundaries of perception, she challenges commonly accepted ideas and beliefs while proposing new modes of seeing and understanding reality.

Kwade’s work is represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, and the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, among other international institutions. Her public sculptures can also be found around the world—at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts as well as sites in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and other countries. Her practice is part of a lineage of pioneering 20th century abstractionists within Pace’s program, including Louise Nevelson—who shaped what would come to be known as installation art with her iconic sculptural “environments”—and Agnes Martin, whose work was exhibited alongside Kwade’s in a two-artist exhibition at the gallery’s Los Angeles space in 2024.

At the center of Alicja Kwade: Telos Tales are three large-scale sculptures in which powder-coated steel frames gradually transform into amorphous, tree-like bronze forms. The architectural, linear structures slowly dissolve into organic shapes, as if one material is evolving into the other. The sculptures unfold into a distinct, self-contained configuration—complete in itself, yet intrinsically connected to a larger conceptual framework. Each work is named for a concept from Aristotle’s fourfold theory of causes: Causa Materialis, Causa Efficiens, and Causa Formalis. The fourth cause, Causa Finalis—the purpose, or telos—remains unnamed but not unconsidered: it is implicit in the exhibition’s title.

Another work, PhaseChase, explores the intangible nature of time. This piece consists of a highly polished stainless steel pipe suspended from the ceiling. Embedded within the pipe is a double-sided clock face, mirrored from within to create a multiplication of reflections that appear to dissolve into a curved, reflective surface.

Though distinct in form and concept, these works engage in a dynamic dialogue. Material and time intersect, literally and conceptually, generating a space in which perception, causality, and temporality become intertwined.

In this immersive exhibition, Kwade deepens her long-standing interest in time as a structuring principle of perception, reality, and causality. Her works reflect on the cyclical, linear, and ultimately elusive nature of temporal experience and its interdependence on both natural and constructed systems—an ongoing theme in her practice. This presentation showcases new developments in Kwade’s engagement with material, form, and concept, and it exemplifies the experimental spirit that has defined her work from the very beginning of her career.

Kwade’s exhibition at Pace in New York follows her first solo institutional presentation in Hong Kong, which was presented this year at Tai Kwun. In the fall, the artist will mount a solo exhibition at M Leuven in Belgium.


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