Brigitte Kowanz and Erwin Wurm represented Austria at the 2017 Venice Art Biennial with «two autonomous positions» of expansions of the concept of architecture.
With her genuine light works, Brigitte Kowanz (1957-2022) was one of the internationally important artists in this field. She made light visible as an independent phenomenon that not only illuminates but, like language and writing, is a carrier of information and generates meaning. It is therefore no coincidence that the artist has combined light with language since the late 1980s to create memorable pictorial formulas. Both means of expression served Kowanz as medium, motif and metaphor to visualise the complex relationship between seeing and understanding, perceiving and recognising.
For her contribution to the Venice Biennale, the artist created a completely new, expansive complex of works. The theme of the installation was the world-changing, abstract phenomenon of digitalisation, which Kowanz translated into the sensual language of art. To this end, she took up those moments in recent history when the decisive technical innovations were introduced: the World Wide Web, Google, Wikipedia and the iPhone.
