The Brooklyn Rail

In Telos Tales, Polish-German contemporary visual artist Alicja Kwade (b. 1979) manipulates ordinary materials and systems into metaphysical investigations. The exhibition gives audiences a choreographed spatial experience founded in time and nature, and grounded in human impact.

The eponymous work Telos Tales (2025) dominates the main gallery space. The large-scale installation features salvaged tree branches, collected from Berlin city parks during seasonal pruning, cast in patinated bronze and suspended within geometric black steel frames. As Kwade explains, these are “the wild ends,” or pieces, perhaps on the brink of falling. The frames, fabricated from powder-coated stainless steel, create viewing corridors that both divide and connect the gallery space. Hanging within these structures are polished stainless steel clock faces, their reflective surfaces multiplying perspectives and equally marking increments of constructed time.

The “Causa” series of works, composed of Causa Efficiens, Causa Materialis, and Causa Formalis (all 2025), deepens the exhibition’s exploration of Aristotelian philosophy, though it raises complex questions about the sufficiency of sculpture in fully encapsulating Aristotelian causation. These installations, varying significantly in scale and composition, consistently juxtapose bronze-cast natural elements against precise geometric steel structures, challenging the viewer to reflect critically upon Aristotle’s distinctions between form, material, and efficient causes. Causa Formalis, the most monumental at nearly 15 feet tall and 30 feet wide, compels audiences into a necessary physical interaction, transforming passive observation into an active philosophical interrogation. However, while Kwade masterfully situates the viewer within Aristotelian principles, one might question if the immersive physicality alone adequately addresses the subtler nuances of Aristotelian metaphysics, or if it instead foregrounds form at the potential expense of engaging deeper conceptual interplay between materiality and purpose.

Kwade’s manipulation of temporal systems is most explicitly addressed in PhaseChase (2025), a cylindrical stainless steel clock installation suspended from the ceiling. This work incorporates both visual and audio elements; the cylindrical form and reflective surface disorient the viewer, while the integrated sound component reinforces the time-based dimension. The installation effectively engages Henri Bergson’s concept of duration, affirming Kwade’s ability to accentuate the subjective perception of time and its continuous, fluid nature, juxtaposing it against the rigid measurement inherent in the object's physical form.

Throughout the gallery space, the “SunderState” series (2025) offers intimate perspectives of similar themes. These works, numbered II through VIII, consist of polished or sandblasted glass columns with patinated bronze bases; they contain what appear to be crystalline formations at their uppermost surfaces. Kwade describes them as resembling water, crystals, or even “stamped out pieces of a river.” The works materialize time in a different register entirely; altogether, they render movement as suspended matter.

The conceptual underpinning of the exhibition, referenced in its title, draws from Aristotelian philosophy. As Kwade explains, “Telos” refers to what Aristotle defined as the inherent purpose of something; she notes, for example, that a seed becomes a tree by way of this same concept. That said, the exhibition questions this teleological certainty. Put simply, when a seed becomes a chair rather than a tree, its trajectory is fundamentally redirected. In this way, the artist’s work examines the tension between natural order and human systems of organization, or what she describes as first questioning existing ideas, and subsequently either replicating them or making them our own. In her work, Kwade examines whether art is copying nature, or if instead the opposite might be true.

Audiences have access to this same line of thought in What part of me don’t you know (2023), which, displayed in a vitrine, presents a tall paper scroll encased in glass. This work parallels another in which Kwade depicted the entire DNA of a tree; she notes that the work represents knowing everything but still questioning it. The work is a tree in one fashion, but something else entirely in another; accordingly, the viewer adopts the artist’s interests in systems of classification and representation, and the exhibition design becomes part of the conceptual framework. Kwade approaches the gallery space like a theater or a stage manager: at every turn, she considers how people walk, what they see and hear, and how they move or feel. The metal frames containing branches establish boundaries that simultaneously divide and connect spaces, while the suspended clock elements establish a rhythm through the gallery.

Throughout Telos Tales, Kwade employs sophisticated technological processes that stay invisible in the finished works. Partnering with a team of architects and engineers, she uses 3D modeling to plan complex installations before casting natural materials and constructing geometric frames. Still, she notes that while the show includes computer-generated elements, audiences never really see them. Kwade highlights that digital manipulation is just a tool, and that it’s meant to be subtle. Her polished metals and reflective surfaces connect to Anish Kapoor’s explorations of the void and phenomenological disorientation. But while Kapoor often seeks a universal sublime through material transformation, Kwade roots her practice in specific philosophical questions: in the arbitrariness of temporal systems and in the politicization of spatial perception from the Northern Hemisphere perspective. Her sublime is epistemological rather than transcendent, and it questions the very frameworks through which we construct meaning.