LIVRES

Brigitte Kowanz : Timelight – Lightspace

Brigitte Kowantz, artiste autrichienne, s’intéresse à la matérialité de la lumière et du texte. Chaque mot illuminé met en avant le rapport structurant de la lumière et du langage. Par cette interaction, tous deux deviennent objet autant que sujet de « réflexion »…

— Éditeur(s) : Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz Verlag
— Année : 2001
— Format : 20 x 23,50 cm
— Illustrations : 56 dont 40 en couleurs
— Page(s) : 88
— Langue(s) : anglais, allemand
— ISBN : 3-7757-9108-6
— Prix : 16,80 €

Présentation

The Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz imbues the abstract quality of light with concrete form in her works. She literally lets it speak in word and text motifs, relates it to surrounding space, and captures it in luminous objects in her approach to the theme of the structural power of light and linguistic energy. Kowanz’s treatment of the media of light and language clearly shows that visualization and linguistic articulation, illumination and discussion, are synonymous strategies of reflection which, when placed in relationship of interaction, are capable of enlightening and describing one another.
The complementary mechanism involving the translation of light into language and the illumination of language is exemplified in the work illustrated on the cover of this book : light is What We See. The use of electric light to present such a sentence — formulated in different languages — as an object of art is equivalent to the construction of a self-describing statement whose tautological narrowing of focus challenges internalized, established modes of seeing and thinking.

L’artiste

Brigitte Kowanz (born 1957 in Vienna). 1975-1980 : studied at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna; guest professor at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna since 1997.