Features surreal sculptures from Alicja Kwade’s exhibition “Dusty Die” at M Leuven in Belgium.

What if the unknown is not a boundary, but a starting point?

In the work of the sculptor Alicja Kwade (b. Katowice, 1979; lives and works in Berlin) reality is turned upside down. Boulders appear weightless, mirrors offer glimpses of parallel realities, and time loses its direction. Using materials such as metal, glass, ancient rocks, and petrified wood, she constructs environments that are at once familiar and alienating—spaces where fixed meanings dissolve and perception itself begins to shift. 

For Kwade, science is not a conclusive system but a subjective construction—a temporary attempt to impose order on something that ultimately remains unknowable. Her work makes tangible the idea that it is precisely in not knowing that the imagination begins. 

The catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition “Dusty Die” at M Leuven. With texts by Eva Wittocx, Ralph Collier, and Sylvia Wenmackers.