Brigitte Kowanz, s, 2020

2020

Medium

Reflecting textile, aluminum and lacquer

Dimensions

90 × 90 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-155797

The wall work "s" (2020) is part of the series "Reflections", in which Brigitte Kowanz emphasizes the painterly quality of light. The effect of the highly reflective surfaces of the works is determined by the incidence of light and changes depending on the surrounding lighting or by photographing the canvas with a flash. The medium of light is made tangible and treated as an independent phenomenon, material, and information carrier, as well as a metaphor for the search for new forms of representation of visible reality. The materiality of the canvas and the immateriality of light also reflect the socio-political processes of an increasingly digitalized world in which the relationships between absence and presence are renegotiated. In these works, Kowanz explores the influence of light-generating media on society and art, with aspects of virtualization and progressive notions of what an image and space can be appearing early on. In "Reflections", she makes a formal reference to the classical medium of the image, which she attempts to dissolve by adding and representing light on the surface. She develops a seemingly virtual visual language that is created by translating the two-dimensional perception of the surface into a three-dimensional spread of light waves in space: "In my work, I try to create three-dimensionality through the layering of transparent surfaces such as glass or reflective surfaces, and to create new, virtual spaces with the help of light. In "s" (2020), as in many of her works, Kowanz refers to her longstanding exploration of Morse code, which she uses as both a formal element and a transmitter of a second level of meaning. Here, the letter s is visually represented by the combination of three short signals and appears on the canvas as a graphic code activated by any external light source. Kowanz described her interest in the elementary forms of Morse code: "Dashes and dots, circles and rectangles, short and long. But it is also interesting that it carries this binary system, which functions in different ways, as a light signal, as an acoustic signal, or as a graphic code.