Alicja Kwade’s La Pêche Miraculeuse opens at Pace Tokyo
The Berlin based artist's new sculptures and works on paper explore the invisible forces that shape perception, transforming the ordinary into the mysterious.
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Alicja Kwade’s practise has long occupied the territory where the rational mind begins to unravel, where the solidity of objects dissolves into philosophical questioning. Her new exhibition at Pace Tokyo ventures further into this territory of gentle upheaval, a body of work that asks us to reconsider what we think we know about the material world.
The sculptures and works on paper gathered for La Pêche Miraculeuse move with a particular grace through states of transformation. A stone becomes an image. Time assumes spatial form. A peach metamorphoses into something altogether unfamiliar, no longer the fruit we recognise but something stranger and more compelling. These are not tricks of the eye, nor simple visual puns; rather, they are meditations on the delicate architecture of perception itself.
What emerges throughout the exhibition is a contemplation of the invisible. Kwade seems fascinated by what lies between things, by the spaces and forces we cannot see yet which govern fundamentally how we look, how we understand, how we move through the world. This is art as a kind of philosophical inquiry, conducted through stone and paper, through material and light.
The works possess a quiet precision. There is nothing verbose here, nothing that shouts; instead, there is an elegant restraint that allows each piece to breathe, to reveal itself gradually to the patient viewer. The sculptures carry a sculptural dignity, whilst the works on paper possess the intimacy of drawing, of the artist’s hand moving across the surface with intention and care.
For those drawn to contemporary practice that honours the viewer’s intelligence, that treats art as a conversation rather than a pronouncement, this exhibition offers substantial reward. Kwade’s work belongs to that lineage of artists who understand that the most powerful gestures are often the most economical, and that genuine transformation occurs not in spectacle but in the moment of recognition when we see ourselves seeing.
Alicja Kwade: La Pêche Miraculeuse runs through December 25, 2026 at Pace Gallery’s Tokyo location in Azabudai Hills. The opening reception takes place on October 29 from 4 to 7 PM. The artist will also participate in a public talk at Tokyo University of the Arts on October 30.
Imagery courtesy of Pace Gallery (@pacegallery).
