Brigitte Kowanz: “The Return of the Endlessly Modified Self”

Opening: Thu, Feb 05, 19:00
Venue: ArtBox, MQ Main Courtyard
Admission free

Brigitte Kowanz has developed a site-specific installation for the ArtBox in the MuseumsQuartier.
“The return of the endlessly modified self” – real and virtual space merge into one another.
Through the transparency of the glass panels and the effect of the illuminated mirrored base, the constantly changing surroundings of the MuseumsQuartier become an integrative part of the installation. Natural and artificial light coming from outside alter the installation during the course of the day and at night; at the same time, the installation affects its surroundings. Through this virtual interplay the borders between “inside” and “outside” are dissolved.
Here light takes on a space-creating and transitive potential, while also appearing fleeting and expansive, making it possible to experience the ambivalence and polarity immanent to the medium of light.

Subject of Brigitte Kowanz' artistic work is light, the naturally omnipresent visibility guarantor, which illuminates things but is easily overlooked itself. Whether refraction, play of shadows, reflection or mirror image, language codes or Morse signs, with her works, the artist is visualising with the spatiotemporal appearance and media function of light its incomprehensible physics as well. With immense consequences Brigitte Kowanz releases light from the two dimensional plane and brings it into contemplation with its expansive, difficult, elusive spatiality.

Containers and layers of transparent glass and mirrors condense to optical traps and thought-provoking pieces through visual certainty and cognitive processes of understanding, towards which our language skills belong.

In the age of the urban information society artificial light has become the bearer of signs and messages.
Logically Brigitte Kowanz is illuminating text as an instrument of conceptual, alphanumeric and tautological findings, to refer to the scale of light and language as coordinates in an orientation system of the senses.

Finally Brigitte Kowanz comprehends light as a medium which obtains the experience of time in both viewing and moving. To the utmost degree she leads the idea of the ephemeral visibility in those dim shimmering reflectors, in which the light allows no material and spatial positioning of the work and viewer.

Courtesy:
Häusler Contemporary, München/Zürich – <link http: www.haeusler-contemporary.com>www.haeusler-contemporary.com
Galerie Krobath, Wien/Berlin – <link http: www.galeriekrobath.at>www.galeriekrobath.at
Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska, Salzburg - <link http: www.ruzicska.com>www.ruzicska.com
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York – <link http: www.brycewolkowitz.com>www.brycewolkowitz.com

Image: Brigitte Kowanz: 1234567890, 2012, Neon, Mirror 245 x 210 x 22 cm Photo: Wolfgang Woessner