Returning to the western end of 21st Street after a three-year sojourn to a temporary gallery a few blocks north, 303 filled its soaring 2,000-square-foot main exhibition space with elegant, exacting new sculptures by Berlin-based Alicja Kwade. The title, “I Rise Again, Changed but the Same,” sets an appropriately sweeping tone. Kwade’s “paravents”—the mixed-media sculptures that make up the bulk of the show—pair two-way mirrors with transparent panes of glass and neatly placed found objects (rocks, metal pipes, wooden steps, cigarette packets), creating tableaux that manipulate perception and distort the body’s experience of architectural space. A tangle of brass rings, 99 Seconds, looks on the verge of implosion. Along the wall are several carefully placed sculptures, all titled Incident (Trait Transference), where a mirrored panel is matched with an equally sized rectangle of rusted Cor-ten steel, one against the wall, the other on the floor, their corners just barely touching. On some, the rust seems to creep up, invading the shiny mirrored surface. Or is it the other way around? —Leigh Anne Miller
Pictured: View of Alicja Kwade’s exhibition “I Rise Again, Changed But The Same,” 2016; at 303, New York.