Agnieszka Kurant

'Collective Intelligence'

Oct. 12, 2017 - Jan. 14, 2018

The SCAD Museum of Art presents "Collective Intelligence," a solo exhibition featuring the work of Agnieszka Kurant, composed of sculpture, works on paper, lenticular prints and a video. Kurant’s research-based practice explores how complex social, economic and cultural systems can operate in ways that confuse distinctions between fiction and reality or nature and culture. Through unconventional artistic media and methods of manifestation, the artist investigates the concealed exploitations of social energies in contemporary economy and cultural production.

Agnieszka Kurant, "A.A.I 10–15," termite mounds built by termite colonies from colored sand, gold, glitter and crystals, 2017. Commissioned by SCAD Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.
Agnieszka Kurant, "A.A.I 10–15," termite mounds built by termite colonies from colored sand, gold, glitter and crystals, 2017. Commissioned by SCAD Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

In a world in which information is nearly free, social capital is starting to play a far more significant role than financial capital. Today, we no longer know when our labor and social capital are being stealthily harvested through algorithmic data analysis, gentrification processes or complex financial instruments. Kurant probes the speculations and exploits of capitalism by analyzing phenomena such as collective intelligence, emergence, virtual capital, immaterial and digital labor and the evolution of memes, civilizations and social movements. She explores the hybrid and shifting status of objects in relation to value, aura, authorship, production, copyright and circulation.

Together, these works dismantle notions of artistic autonomy through multifarious approaches to collaboration, outsourcing and appropriation, while revealing the complex social and economic systems in which we are complicit.

Read more about the exhibition in a review in The Brooklyn Rail.

About the artist

New York City-based artist Agnieszka Kurant (b. 1978, Poland) is currently the artist-in-residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Art Science and Technology in Boston. In 2015, she presented a commission for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s façade. In 2013, Kurant presented her first major exhibition in New York City at SculptureCenter. Her work has been featured worldwide, including the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 12th International Architecture Exhibition (with Aleksandra Wasilkowska); Frieze Projects, London, and Stroom Den Haag, Den Haag, Netherlands. Kurant has contributed to group exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Tate Modern; London; The Kitchen, New York; Mamco, Geneva, Switzerland; MoMA PS1, New York; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; MUMOK, Vienna, Austria; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland; and the Performa Biennial, New York.

Credits

"Collective Intelligence" is curated by Amanda York, SCAD assistant curator of exhibitions.

Museum Admission

The exhibition is free for all museum members and SCAD students, faculty and staff with a valid SCAD Card and open to the public with the cost of museum admission. 

More on view

View all exhibitions