Agnieszka Kurant is a conceptual interdisciplinary artist from Poland who explores the intricate connections between social, economic, and cultural systems, blurring distinctions between reality and fiction. Oscillating between biological, digital and geological, natural and artificial, life and nonlife, her speculative works explore emergence, cybernetics, automation, artificial life, mining industries, re-distribution and the replacement of individual authorship by complex, collective forms.
Kurant’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Hannover Kunstverein (2023), Castello di Rivoli (2021), Palais de Tokyo (2014), and the Performa Biennial (2009). In 2010, she represented Poland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture alongside architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska. Kurant has received several prestigious awards, including the LACMA A+T Award (2020), the Frontier Art Prize, and the Google AMI Award (2022). Additionally, her work has been included in the collections of museums such as the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and SFMOMA.
Post-Fordite 6 (2020)
Fossilized automotive paint, epoxy resin, powdered stone, steel
22.9 x 25.4 x 17.8 cm
Agnieszka Kurant, Post-Fordite 6 (2020)The Post-Fordite series is a speculative body of works envisioning future geologies. Fordite, also known as as Detroit agate, is a recently discovered natural-artificial phenomenon, emerging from the fossilization of thousands of layers of automotive paint amassed in car production lines since the beginning of the 20th century. Recently, these fossilized-paint formations began circulating online given their aesthetic value. Since Fordite can be cut and polished, it is often used like gemstones.
The artist combines pieces of Fordite collected by factory workers and creates rock-like formations. A century of stratified, hierarchical human labour and its collective ecological footprint is translated into and embodied in this quasi-geological form. Archaeologically, Fordite serves as a witness to shifting trends in car colours and finishes.
Referring to the establishment of Henry Ford Motor Company and Fordism, the Fordite can be seen as a geological by-product of standardised mass production and capitalism. Kurant plays with the strangeness of future geological formations and at the same time speculates on a post-Fordist reality in digital capitalism, where the entire society contributes to a distributed factory of data production.
Sentimentite (Crude oil price drops to minus $37) (2022)
Edition 54/100
Redeemed NFT, pulverised materials and liquid acrylic resin
Kurant preceives our contemporary global economy as being driven by the conversion of crowd dynamics and social energy into both information and capital. In this paradigm, Tweets, shares, and likes are likened to the new oil and gas. With Sentimentite, a series of NFT's that Kurant also converts into a physical form, the artist investigates the relationship between digital capitalism and geology.
In its digital form, the NFT’s 3D rendering’s shape, colour, density constantly evolve, influenced by ‘global sentiment data’ that has been harvested from millions of X (fka Twitter) and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history. The historical events reflect a spectrum of significant contemporary issues with global relevance, including the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 global lockdowns, and, in this particular instance, the unprecedented crude oil price drop to minus $37.
When redeemed, the NFT becomes a fixed, physical sculpture, cast from the eponymous material Sentimentite – Kurant’s own fictional material, a new form of mineral currency made out of over 60 objects used as currencies throughout history. The resulting sculpture serves as both a commentary on the global market and a speculative narrative about the interplay between technology and geology.
Post-Fordite 6 is included as part of the 2024 Biennale of Sydney (9 March – 10 June 2024).
Sentimentite is a collaboration between Agnieszka Kurant and Zien.
Both works were selected by the Commissioning Committee and acquired through the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund. They will subsequently be donated to the Dutch state, becoming an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.