Official description: Since her early works, Brigitte Kowanz’s use of light has moved in multiple and diverse directions. She is interested in ‘studying light, its potential to form space, but also as a transformational medium, and in its complementary properties.’ For Kowanz, light is the prerequisite for seeing and perceiving, which in itself can only be perceived in connection with material. Light is a carrier of information that is inseparable from space; light is expansive and elusive, it never remains the same – tracing the intangible and ephemeral with great analytical obsession is at the core of her practice. As Kowanz was a pioneer of light-based media art, she holds a unique position in contemporary art. Her work can be described as conceptual poetry.

Brigitte Kowanz (born 1957 in Vienna; died 2022 in Vienna) opened up the spatial properties of light, both through her sculptural practice and through site-specific architectural installations such as her representation at the Austrian Pavillion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and her wellover 50 installations for public spaces.

Brigitte Kowanz: Light Steps, 1990 / Art Basel 2023 Unlimited. Basel (Switzerland), June 14, 2023.

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