4≠4 | brigitte kowanz

This Viewing Room accompanies the solo exhibition 4≠4 of the Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz (1957-2022), for which the gallery in Berlin is transformed into a black light space where her phosphorescent and fluorescent works are presented within a spatial installation for the very first time.

Detailed photos and further information on the individual works open by clicking on the images.

All Photos: Marjorie Brunet Plaza | unless otherwise stated

"Light is energetic and infinitely complex. It is omnipresent and yet intangible. Light makes everything visible, yet remains transparent itself. It has suction power and is inseparable from space. For me, it's about creating constellations in which light can show itself."

– Brigitte Kowanz

Installation view ISTR Schloss Museum Linz (2022)  | Photo: Michael Maritsch

On the reflective textile of High Five (2021), that can be activated by flashlight photography, five short black light lamps are set horizontally, connected to the fabric by orange glowing cables. In the darkness, the black light tubes and the glowing cables stand out from the background. The result are five lines that seem to float in space and establish a formal proximity to Kowanz's expansive installation Light Steps. In her works, Kowanz consistently reflects on the influence of light-generating New Media on society, as well as on art, and from the very beginning she addresses aspects of virtualization as well as new forms of image and space. 

The virtual reality work ... sollte die Reise weitergehen, suchte man Neuseeland, in diesem fremden Gelände ... (1980/2020) was created on the occasion of the exhibition Lost Under the Surface at Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich (2020) and transfers one of the first black light installations by Brigitte Kowanz and Franz Graf at Galerie Krinzinger in Innsbruck 1980 into virtual space. Between 1979 and 1984, together with Franz Graf, they developed paper transparencies and everyday objects made of phosphorescent and fluorescent paints, as well as black light installations, which reflected the influence of New Media, such as video, VHS, and music on art and society. Inspired by Punk and New Wave, they looked for ways to transfer transcendent experiences from club and pop culture into art. Their exploration of light can also be traced back to the new (light-based) technological medias of video, film, and photography. They explored how influences of these new media and their perception could be translated into painting. With this media-reflexive approach, multi-layered spatial installations were created in which both the traditional concept of the image and the meaning of spatial sensation became unstable and increasingly dissolved, while the recipients took on a new immersive relationship to the work. 

Installation view Suchte man Neuseeland, Galerie Krinzinger Innsbruck (1980)

Through the addition of virtual reality, it is possible to relive this experience while simultaneously standing in a current black light space by Brigitte Kowanz. Visitors thus become an integrative part of her work – similar to Kowanz's mirrored works – in which they participate in multiple layers and realities. While our bodies are in real spaces, in Kowanz's works we enter virtual fictional spaces in which we are confronted with coded information ranging from conceptual poetry to socio-cultural issues.

Installation view Lost under the Surface, Museum Haus Konstruktiv (2020) | Photo: Stefan Altenburger

The wall work from 1985 stands for Brigitte Kowanz's early exploration of the dissolution of painting through light. The fruit box is lined with plaster and phosphorescent paint, which glows in the dark. This way the in daylight factual object is virtualized when combined with black light and about to dissolve. The green color and the orange tip of the piece of wood, reminiscent of a matchstick, glow into the space, while the objecthood of the work recedes into the background. In subsequent works, the artist continues to question the mutability or dissolution of painting, experimenting with glass bottles as containers for light by placing fluorescent painted corks in the necks of the bottles. These early works with fluorescent pigments are the precursors for the series Flashback (1988/2021) and the starting point for the artist's intense and consistent engagement with the medium of light.

In Flashback 4≠4 (1988/2021) and Flashback 4x3 (1988/2021) Brigitte Kowanz references her early works from the 1980s, in which she intensively explored the meaning of light as an artistic material and its potential for virtualization and develops them further. In her early light works Fluoflaschen (1985-1988), the artist pursues the analytical decomposition of painting into its constituent parts as well as its extension into spatiality by filling fluorescent pigments into bottles that begin to glow under black light. The light is no longer thrown onto the canvas to make it visible, but it itself radiates from the objects and thus activates the space in which the installation and the recipients are located. 

In Flashback Look Ahead (2021), Brigitte Kowanz quoted and evolved her own earlier work of the 1980s. Black light tubes and cables covered with fluorescent fabric are laid out radially around a dark circle of aluminum stretched with reflective textile, emphasizing the painterly qualities of light which can be activated by flashlight photography. The work addresses a speed and ephemerality related to light, as well as social and technological changes. In the title, the temporal dichotomy is expressed, referring both to the citation of her own early work and the further development manifested in it. The location of the recipient in the space plays a decisive role depending on the viewer's point of view and the lighting situation of the room. Kowanz describes these changes as choreographies or constellations that can only be experienced through movement.

Fall of the Wall 09.11.1989 (2017/2019) is a wall installation in which Brigitte Kowanz uses morse code and inscribes the significant dates of Germany's political unification into the spiraling light tubes, which stand as both a testimony to contemporary European history and a reminder of the global responsibility of each individual. In many of her works, Kowanz immortalizes landmarks of political decisions or the digital revolution, as well as caesuras of our present that have brought about social and political upheavals. The artist transforms the morse code into a curved spatial drawing by placing the neon yellow cable on a metal element that is divided into short and long segments, reproducing the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall as morse code, while the sequence of numbers is simultaneously morphed by an iPad as a light and acoustic signal.

The edition Lichtverschmutzung (2021) made of two black light bulbs and a long orange or yellow neon-colored cable, stretches through the room and across the wall as a connecting element. While the bulbs remain off, the cable glows and illuminates the space when illuminated by black light. For Kowanz, the cable, which can run freely through the space, is not a means to the end of lighting, but an essential part of her works in terms of form and content. She understands light as a carrier of information that is generated by electricity and that cables carry from one place to another. Thus, the connecting element is as much a part of the flow of information as the lamp. 
At the same time, Lichtverschmutzung pays homage to Joseph Beuys's 1985 Capri-Batterie in which a yellow light bulb is placed inside a lemon while the fruit becoming a natural energy source. Both artists refer to the production of energy, its transformation to light and as a carrier of information, whereby the technical apparatuses are at the same time mirrors of society.

"Light is the prerequisite for seeing and perceiving. Light in itself, however, can only be perceived in connection with material. Light is energetic and dynamic, it is a carrier of information. Light can be and can not be. This on and off opens the possibility to inform with light. Light is expansive and elusive, it never remains the same – light is a metaphor for life."

 - Brigitte Kowanz

Installation view Secession, Vienna (1993) | Photo: Matthias Herrmann