Agnieszka Kurant's art explores what is invisible: flows of virtual capital, invisible work, hidden forms of exploitation and fictions that build reality. The methods of creating works and their forms are used by the artist to speculate about the future of work and creativity, and to observe the blurring line between what is natural and synthetic, human and inhuman. The exhibition Errorism focuses on both the creative and destructive role of error in the face of modern automation and algorithmization.

The presence of error is crucial to both evolutionary processes and human creativity. Many scientific discoveries that seem to be the result of rational progress are actually led by chance. Attempts at neoliberal risk management try to remove errors. However, they fail to anticipate disasters and election results because they do not take into account the irrationality of many human behavior. But what happens to creativity when artificial intelligence can endure our mistakes and stop wandering? How will we come to new knowledge or create culture? By asking about the value of error, Kurant continues to reflect on the ways in which societies evolve.

The artist's works pose questions about the position of an individual in relation to the phenomenon of collective intelligence. The term refers to the process of group decisions and to new forms that emerge as a result of interaction between thousands or millions of humans, animals, molecules, and bacteria. This phenomenon occurs both on the Internet, in the insect world, and between neurons in the brain. It shows that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Agnieszka Kurant's actions are often based on the perverse use of a crowdsourcing strategy that transcends geographic and genre boundaries. They criticize modern capitalism based on using the labor of the whole society in a global factory, the product of which is digital traces left by our behavior and emotions.

Commodification today concerns not only the world of material goods and services, but above all information. They are the key to simulating the future. What we cannot predict, we try to calculate with the help of algorithms. The artist problematizes the methods of predicting the future and takes a critical look at the theories of development shaped by colonialism and neoliberalism. Her interests also include the activities of insurance companies that speculate on risk, ways of trading the unknowns and the future. Data has now become the most important capital of today and the next - after coal and oil - raw material that drives the economic system devastating the planet. The artist analyzes how they influence not only what is virtual, but also material, organic and mineral.

The works on display are the result of constantly occurring processes and collective work of entire societies. Para-geological structures, termite mounds, images borrowed from scientific simulations and those generated with the help of algorithms. They all undermine the idea of ​​individual authorship and a stable, finite form. Kurant points out the similarities between the ways in which different forms emerge in biological, social, and virtual systems. In her view, the mineral crystallizes analogously to the evolution of sign and language, the circulation of memes, gossip or the development of social movements and ideas. The exhibition presents various stages of the formation, changes and decomposition of forms that reflect and comment on the paths of shaping society.


Agnieszka Kurant is a conceptual artist. He deals with collective intelligence, non-human intelligence (from microorganisms to artificial intelligence) and the exploitation of social capital in late capitalism. She studied art history at the University of Lodz, photography at PWSFTiTv in Lodz and creative curating at Goldsmith College in London. Kurant is a laureate of the LACMA A + T Award 2020, Frontier Art Prize 2019 and Pollock-Krasner Award 2018. Currently, she is a scholarship holder of the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. In 2018-2019 she was an artist in residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology. Her works have recently been presented at the Istanbul Biennale, MoMA in New York, Kunsthalle Wien, De Young Museum in San Francisco, Milano Triennale, Jameel Art Center in Dubai and MOCA Toronto, among others. In 2021, Kurant realized a project for the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, and in 2015, a project on the facade of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2010, she represented Poland at the Venice Architecture Biennale (together with Aleksandra Wasilkowska). Her work has also been exhibited at the Sculpture Center in New York; Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Guggenheim Bilbao, Witte de With in Rotterdam, Moderna Museet, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Cleveland Biennial; MUMOK in Vienna, The Kitchen in New York, Bonner Kunstverein; Grazer Kunstverein, Kunsthalle Meinz, Art Museum