BRIGITTE
KOWANZ
17 April - 26 May 2007
ARCHIVE - EXHIBITIONS
BRIGITTE KOWANZ
17 April - 26 May 2007
The story goes that Goethe, while dying, said as his very last words: «Mehr Licht» (more light).
In MORE L978T, the partly encrypted title of a recent publication on the Viennese artist Brigitte Kowanz, the numbers 9, 7, 8 correspond to the alphabetical positions of the words I, G, H. It is not a matter of a simple substitution trick, but rather the incipit to a work that arises from the intersection between numbers, words and light. Neon light, the medium the artist used to work with since almost twenty years and for which she is internationally acclaimed, and cold materials such as aluminium, glass, steel and mirrors. Thus an extremely refined and hi-tech work that plunges the viewer into a rarefied atmosphere of materials, structures and texts always in relation to the architectural space. In Masstab (scale) the neon segments and the ratios, indicated by bright numerals, define the proportions between the sides of the environment where the installation is placed each time.
During the last years the artist, professor at the renowned Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, produced a series of works where analytic and conceptual aspects disclose a further dimension. Like in the vertiginous Exit (2006) where the neon sign and the mirroring surfaces shape a space that cannot be visually measured and has a strong poetical intensity. This and other works, on show for the very first time in Italy at the Galleria Contemporaneo, give us a unique and important chance to approach a strongly evocative artistic research of great formal coherence.
Link
www.kowanz.com
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