art düsseldorf 2022

The Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz (1957-2022) made light her primary artistic medium. She continuously examined its different qualities and manifestations via objects, installations, and spatial interventions using various illuminants. The medium of light is made tangible and treated as an independent phenomenon, material, and information carrier, as well as a metaphor for a search for new forms of representation of visible reality. Kowanz combines language—for instance political statements and news transmissions— with formal aesthetics, illustrating that light is not just a neutral vehicle for information, but plays a decisive role in shaping it.

Kowanz was awarded the Großer Österreichischder Staatspreis (Grand Austrian State Prize) in 2009 and exhibited at the Austrian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). She has held a professorship at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1997-2021. Selected solo exhibitions have taken place in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2020), Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2011), and the Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig, Vienna (2010).

→ CV Brigitte Kowanz

Troika is a contemporary art group founded in 2003 by Eva Rucki (*1976, Germany), Conny Freyer (*1976, Germany), and Sebastien Noel (*1977, France). The artists live and work in London. With a particular interest in subjective and objective readings of reality and various relationships involving humans and technology, Troika examines how information is transmitted in the digital world and how it transitions into physical reality. Their works deal with different systems of representation and illustrate how technological progress and human reality influence each other.

Selected solo exhibitions have been presented at Espacio Arte Abierto in Mexico City (2021), Barbican Gallery in London (2019), NC Arte in Bogota (2015) und Daelim Museum in Seoul (2014). Troika’s cross-media works are part of the collections of the Center Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv. Troika realized three site-specific installations for the British Pavilion at World Exhibition 2010 Shanghai.

→ CV Troika