Cover image of the review
Title image: Josef Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski, Nymphex, 1966, gelatin silver photograph from electronic image, 50.6 x 60.8 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Dr George Berger 1978. © Estate of J. S. Ostoja-Kotkowski. Photo: Christopher Snee, Art Gallery of New South Wales

Josef Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski: Solid Light
  • Jane Eckett


13 Jul 2019
McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery 1 Apr - 14 Jul 2019

Why is Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski not more widely recognised as the post-war modernist pioneer he evidently was? His work was at the international vanguard in terms of his experiments with sound and light, with clear links to the Zero group in Germany and their wider international network of affiliated artists including the Gutai group in Japan and the Nouveaux Réalistes in France. It is rich enough to have sustained numerous scholarly studies, which claim him variously as Australia's first video artist, the first to use lasers in a stage production, an innovator in creative microcomputing, and not just the first artist to create electronically generated images in Australia but also one of only a tiny few to do so in the early 1960s anywhere in the world.

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