In the exhibition 'Infinite Jest,' the Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade presents a bicycle that has been bent into a circle. She has a sense of humor, something she also demonstrated during our conversation in her studio.

Alicja is in a good mood as she whirls about her studio in Berlin on this summer afternoon. After passing through two small rooms and past several camera-shy assistants, one arrives at the heart of the realm of the Polish-born artist, who grew up in Hannover: a hall flooded with light with curved steel beams and wonderful skylights. A vintage sofa, upholstered armchairs, a mint-green round table, and matching cantilever chairs stand between artworks, boxes, and cables. One looks out over the entire hall from a level built about halfway between the floor and the ceiling. In the 1920s, it housed film studios; Marlene Dietrich whooshed through the rooms. "The Blue Angel" was shot here, says Kwade. Several artists now work in the hall, including the sculptor Michael Sailstorfer, one of Kwade's friends.

Kwade treats herself to a cigarette break and sips at a cup of coffee. She is currently preparing an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen with her assistants. One of the works she will be showing there is a version of her installation "Nach Osten" (Facing East), which delighted the art public for the first time in 2013 when it was presented in the exhibition space of the former St. Agnes Church in Kreuzberg run by her gallerist, Johann König. Kwade drew inspiration for this work from the Foucault Pendulum, with which, in the nineteenth century, the physicist Léon Foucault proved that the earth rotates. He suspended a metal ball on a long wire from the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. It not only constantly swung back and forth like a pendulum, it also drew a circle. Kwade seized the idea, but instead of a metal ball she let a light bulb swing from the high church ceiling down into the dark, brutalist space. Thus the circle became the glowing visual trace of the rotation of the earth. A Bauhaus-style lamp is currently dangling from the ceiling of her studio just above the floor--Kwade is simulating the experiment for new versions.

The artist uses all possible kinds of materials in her sculptures and installations; techniques often have to be developed before her ideas can even be put into practice in the first place. Kwade's work "Reise ohne Ankunft" (Journey without End) is currently on view at the SCHIRN, a bicycle neatly bent into a circle. She even had to use two bicycles for her complex undertaking. They were taken apart, and then the parts were bent and welded back together. Initially, the object--not yet completely bent into a circle--was part of an installation that Kwade presented in Berlin in 2012. "In Circles" consisted of several half-bent objects arranged in a kind of planet model, below them mirrors and doors, for example. The bicycle was actually meant to continue to be ridable. Yet that would have simply been too difficult, says Kwade.

The parallel worlds produced in Kwade's studio are absurd. They make a mockery of what are apparently scientific laws, annoy one's perception, and turn visual habits upside down. Bent metal rods stand against a wall; arranged as an installation, they result in a motion study inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's chronophotogaphy. "I'm a bit obsessed by the thought of making time capable of being experienced physically in space," explains Kwade. She is wearing a gold chain with a pendant in the shape of two crosses around her neck. It was given to her by her boyfriend, the artist Gregot Hildebrandt. It is not only a piece of jewelry, but one of an artist's edition of fifty by Jonathan Horowitz entitled "A Crucifix for Two" based on his installation "Neon Cross for Two" from 2007. Kwade thinks that the double cross blends in well with her work. "I also deal with the dual possibility of interpretations and worldviews. I'm fascinated by thoughts about parallel worlds, in essence about whether the world is the way it is, or whether it might also be another world."

There is a huge searchlight from an old ship standing in the middle of her studio; Kwade discovered it years ago. At some point she would perhaps like to do something with it. The artist admits that she has a passion for collecting things; the shelves in her studio are overflowing with clocks, trinkets, lamps. She bought most of the objects in the Internet or at flea markets. But it is more of a black hole than an archive; most things disappear in it, and rarely find their way into her works, Kwade says and laughs. She often collects things for years, without really knowing why. She maintains her sense of humor. She finds the novel "Infinite Jest," which inspired the exhibition in which her bicycle is on display, pleasantly amusing and biting: "I like the ironic exaggeration with which David Foster Wallace practices social criticism. I have great fun when I create a work that's simply too funny for words."