Brigitte Kowanz and Troika: poetics of reality (encoded)

The gallery’s first major exhibition of 2021, poetics of reality (encoded), brings together works of Brigitte Kowanz and the artist collective Troika, expressing through dialogue their experimental approaches to human perception and the transmission and mediation of information. Both artistic positions question different forms of representation via a subversive examination of abstraction and new pictorial formulas. Their works operate in a long tradition in the fine arts of utilizing scientific methods, but they are about more than powerful aesthetic and conceptual visual phenomena; rather, through language, codes, and algorithms they pursue a critical examination of contemporary issues, from climate policy to digitization.

“With our inaugural 2021 programming, we seek to continuously create new contexts and situations while always aiming for the highest curatorial quality,” says Max Goelitz. “We conceive artistic encounters in entirely new constellations. The convergence of these two powerful artistic positions—Brigitte Kowanz, a recipient of the most prestigious art prize in Austria, who has always maintained a special interest in exchanges with younger generations, and the London-based collective Troika—epitomizes this approach.”

The title of the exhibition refers to the coded forms of language used by the artists, and at the same time points beyond the strong visual presence of the individual works to their underlying poetics, which operate beyond describable reality.

The Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz (b. 1957, Vienna) makes light her primary artistic medium. She continuously examines 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 Österreichischer 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 since 1997. 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). The artist lives and works in Vienna.

Troika is a collaborative contemporary art group founded in 2003 by Eva Rucki (b. 1976, Germany), Conny Freyer (b. 1976, Germany), and Sebastien Noel (b. 1977, France). Troika’s cross-media works investigate how new technologies permeate physical reality and individual perception. They translate human-made data and programmed digital systems, artificial intelligence, and algorithms with an underlying digital design language back into the physical world, thus revealing how technological progress and human relationships to perceptible reality influence one another. Selected solo exhibitions have been presented at Barbican Gallery, London (2019), NC Arte, Bogotá (2015), and the Daelim Museum, 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. The artists live and work in London. 

Curated by Madeleine Freund, the exhibition was conceived in collaboration with the Mexico City gallery OMR. This approach of developing programming jointly with international partners exemplifies the gallery’s aspiration to foster international artistic exchange and discourse—one of the essential cornerstones of max goelitz’s vision. The exhibition also marks the one-year anniversary of the gallery’s opening in spring 2020, when Max Goelitz succeeded at the helm of former Häusler Contemporary.

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