Kowanz’ artistic language also meets those people who don’t necessarily seek out art spaces: in 2010 the slogan “Now I See” flickered across the facade of the Uniqa Tower on Vienna’s Danube Canal. Their “circles of light” can be seen from afar on the “dragonfly” on the roof of the Leopold Museum. And anyone who crosses the state bridge in Salzburg in the direction of the city center will see the neon sign in half-mirrored cubes, reminiscent of the forced laborers who built the bridge.
The objects often seem light-footed, sometimes even spectacular, and yet they draw their viewers into philosophical depths – not only because of the endless effects that result from semi-transparent mirrors.
visible light
The paradox that light makes everything visible but normally remains invisible fascinated Kowanz. Originally working as a painter, she researched early on the ability of light to create space in pairs with a wide variety of materials.
Paper and canvas paintings with various light-dependent pigments, which she created in the early 1980s with her then partner Franz Graf, formed a starting point. From 1984 he created his first light objects and works with fluorescent colors.
