SZCZECIN.- TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin announces ‘Nach Osten’, the first solo exhibition of Alicja Kwade in Poland. The internationally acclaimed Berlin-based artist (born 1979 in Katowice, Poland) moves outside the boundaries of the white cube and engages with the industrial space of TRAFO. Early video works, which can be considered precursors to her later sculptures with which she became internationally known, will be exhibited institutionally for the first time.

The show opened on Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 6pm, followed by an Artist Talk on Sunday, November 29, 2015 at 2pm. The exhibition will be on view until February 28, 2016.

Kwade’s work ‘Nach Osten’ (2013), from which the exhibition is named, steeps the main hall of TRAFO in twilight. A light bulb swings in pendulum from a height of 14 meters through the room; over 24 hours it rotates one time around its own axis to create new bright and dark zones within the room. For the first time, this work is shown within the framework of its precursors: unexhibited video works show Kwade’s vision of a mirrored, scattered world seen ‘through a glass, darkly’ and anticipate the artist’s later sculptural work, with which she has become inter- nationally known.

Unlike Kwade’s recent exhibitions that have been filled with a surreal brightness, the exhibition in TRAFO will emphasize the dark side of the artist’s works. The meaning of light, a central medium in Kwade’s works, is in this case clear: to cast shadows.

This interplay of video works and light and sound installations interacts with an unusual exhibition layout and the post-industrial architecture of TRAFO to create an atmosphere which both fascinates and unsettles as the artist plays with the viewers perceptions of illusion and reality.

ALICJA KWADE (born 1979 in Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin, where she studied at the Universität der Künste from 1999 to 2005.

Her interdisciplinary work uses ordinary objects such as mirrors, lamps, glass and stone to question the structure of reality by playing with mental perceptions and physical experiences of space and time. In creating elegant, melancholic universes based on duplication and unexpected manipulations, Kwade approaches serious questions of science, societal constructs, and physicality in ways that cause the viewer to reevaluate their view of the purpose of the original object.

Recent solo exhibitions include Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2015), Public Art Fund, New York (2015), Kunsthalle Mannheim (2015), Kunsthalle Nurnberg (2015), Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt am Main (2015), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2014) and Haus Esters in Krefeld (2014). Her works have also been on display in numerous group exhibitions, such as in Mudam Luxembourg (2015), Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2014), Kunsthalle Wien (2014), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2013), Public Art Fund Exhibition at City Hall Park in New York City (2013), and CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2012). Her works belong to several international private and public collections. She is the recipient of the Hector Preis (Kunsthalle Mannheim) (2015), the Robert Jacobsen Prize (2010) and the Piepenbrock Förderpreis für Skulptur (2008).