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

BRIGITTE KOWANZ
born in Vienna in 1957, lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

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).