Brigitte Kowanz Kunst Edition / Kunstdruck / Druckgrafik (art prints)

Brigitte Kowanz

1957, born in Vienna (Austria)

Died 2022 in Vienna (Austria)

With her artistic oeuvre, Brigitte Kowanz assumes a unique position in contemporary art. Her work can be described as conceptual poetry. Light as the origin of all life represents, for her, information, and design of space-time. Since the 1980s, light has been central in her work as an artistic medium, which she explores in relation to space and in combination with signs, codes and language. 

For Brigitte Kowanz, light is a means for transcending boundaries and elaborating artistic expression. She questions the conventional understanding of imagery and painting and forges a new integrative relationship between work, space and viewer. Light makes everything visible, while at the same time remaining invisible. Light defines places but has no place itself. Kowanz explores the unfathomable and ephemeral with analytic passion. Light is impossible to pin down, light is in flux, and light is certainly ubiquitous. 

Tapping into the conceptual dimension but also the poetic allusions of her objects and installations, the artist examines the mechanisms of language. To this reciprocal reflection of light and language, she often adds real mirrors, so that reality and virtual reflection merge and the boundaries between artwork and viewer become blurred in the work exhibited. Kowanz uses mirrors as a kind of meta-medium of visual rendition, in the sense that mirrors, through the merging of real space and virtual space, bring forth an infinite number of images, breaking spatial boundaries and rendering them immaterial. Light, language, and mirror constitute three elements which, that combined, enhance ad infinitum the possibilities of self-transcendence and fusion. 

Brigitte Kowanz, lived and worked in Vienna. She studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from 1975 to 1980 and was a professor there from 1997 to 2021. In 2009, she was awarded the Österreichischer Staatspreis (Grand Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts) and in 2017, she represented Austria at the 57th Venice Biennale, together with Erwin Wurm. In 2018, she was awarded the German Lichtkunstpreis and the Cairo Biennale Prize in 2019. Selected solo exhibitions have taken place in the Schlossmuseum, Linz (2022), Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2020) and the Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig, Vienna (2010). Brigitte Kowanz developed well over 50 installations for public spaces, most recently at Zurich SBB (2021) or on the roof of the Leopold Museum in Vienna (2020). 

BRIGITTE KOWANZ
born in Vienna - 1957-2022

Since the 1980s, light has been central in Brigitte Kowanz’s work as an artistic medium, which she explores in relation to space and in combination with signs, codes and language. She focusses on addressing visibility, perception and the production of meaning – all of this in the tradition of a critical reflection of the media. In her latest pieces, her interest has turned more to the digital revolutions of recent decades and their repercussions on society and on our perception of space.

Brigitte Kowanz developed her own artistic vocabulary of light over the course of more than three decades of artistic work. Vocabulary is meant literally here to the extent that Brigitte Kowanz deploys light as language, as code. She employs pure light as an autonomous media, just as in former times the painters worked with pure colour. One important aspect of her light art is the use of language deriving from the experience of urban spaces and the ideography of Conceptual Art. Her work for the Austrian Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia represents the culmination of her vocabulary – the use of neon light, mirrors, reflective metals, writing, codes, and informations.

Kowanz is a poet and architect of light. Her light space at the Biennale Arte 2017 presented the interlocking of physical material space and immaterial virtual space. The body is situated in real space. The space was simultaneously expanded for the body into a virtual space by means of mirrors, two-way mirrors, artificial light and so forth. The words conduct the visitor in a conceptual space, in a fictional space, in a mental space. She models or references the Internet’s global data space. Allegory is formally based to Brigitte Kowanz’s handwriting. The words multiplicated seemingly endlessly via the convex mirrors.

Since the 1980s Brigitte Kowanz is combining light and language to unique compositions. Brigitte Kowanz has held the professorship for "Transmedia Art" at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna since 1997. In 2009 she was awarded the "Great Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts" and in 2018 the German Light Art Prize. For her installation "United in Diversity" for the 13th Cairo Biennale she was awarded the "Biennale Price 2019". In 1984 and 1995 she was represented at the Venice Biennale, in 1987 at the São Paulo Biennale and in 1990 at the Sydney Biennale. In 2017, Brigitte Kowanz created the installation Infinity and Beyond for the Austrian Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale. (Galerie Krinzinger 2021).