Brigitte Kowanz was born in 1957 in Vienna. She studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1975 to 1980. From 1997 until she passed away in 2022, she held a professorship there.
The discovery of her artistic preferences and subsequent development of her own unique style came shortly after graduation. From the inception of her practice, Kowanz focused on the investigation of space and light. In the 1980s, this investigation was undertaken by producing paper and screen images with phosphorescent and fluorescent pigments (in collaboration with Franz Graf). In the mid-1980s, a desire for more materiality (and therefore spatiality), the artist adopted bottles as containers for light, in the form of lamps and fluorescent paint. Complexity made simple.
Kowanz did not limit herself to utilising light as a material, but explored it as a stand-alone subject. The speed of light, for example, is numerically documented in various installations and wall pieces. This mathematical approach complements her linguistic interest, which has seen her engage with language and writing and its translation into codes. Morse alphabet (based on simple dot-dash combinations), coding languages and binary code are all tools and universes she explored.
More recently, transparency and refection, through the use of mirrors of glass, became increasingly important in Kowanz’s work. This led to a diverse overlaying of the virtual and the real in her three-dimensional objects. The mutual reflection of light, language and mirror (Rainer Fuchs) produces hybrid spaces whose boundaries seem to be clearly defined at one moment but gone again the next. Real space and virtual reflection penetrate each other, the boundaries between the artwork and the observer become fluid.
Highlights of her later exhibitions include: 2020, Lost under the Surface, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, CH; 2019, Matter of Reflection, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich, CH; 2019, Sichtlinien des Möglichen, Galerie der DG, Munich, DE; 2018, Deutscher Lichtkunstpreis, Kunstmuseum Celle, DE; 2017, Austrian Pavilion (with Erwin Wurm), 57. Biennale di Venezia, IT; 2017, Codes and Cables, Häusler Contemporary, Munich, DE; 2016, Keep at it, Häusler Contemporary, Lustenau, AT; 2015, Die Wiederkehr des endlos veränderten Selben, ArtBox im MQ Haupthof, Vienna, AT; 2014, Dots and Dashes, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich, CH; 2014, Spaces of Flow, Fernwärme Foyer – Wien Energie, Vienna, AT; 2013, Transmissions (mit Mariano Sardon), Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York, US; 2012, In light of light, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, AT; 2012, What Next, Häusler Contemporary, Munich, DE; 2011, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, TR; 2011, Studio d’Arte Contemporanea Pino Casagrande, Rome, IT; 2011, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York, US; 2011, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, AT; 2010, Now I See: Sprache des Lichts, mumok, Vienna, AT – among many others.
During her career, Kowanz was awarded the Cairo Biennale Prize (2019); the German Light Art Award (2018); the Niederösterreichischer Kulturpreis – Honorary prize
(2015); the Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Arts (2009); the Austrian Art Prize for Visual Arts (1996); the Prize of the City of Vienna for Visual Arts (1991); and the Otto Mauer Prize (1989).
Kowanz passed away in 2022.
