Inge Dick
Touched by light
14.03.2026 – 24.01.2027
Over the course of several decades, Inge Dick's (born 1941) art has evolved into a subtle yet profound exploration of light. Her work reveals the subtle changes in daylight throughout the day caused by rain, fog, snow, and reflections in water, which are often invisible to the naked eye.
INGE DICK’S EIGHTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY
Inge Dick is one of the most renowned figures internationally in the field of contemporary experimental photography and film. Through her intensive engagement with painting and photography, she recognized early on that light is neither constant nor neutral. Natural light is a living phenomenon that changes with the time of day, weather conditions, and seasons.
Her paintings, photographs, and films are poetic records of light. She is devoted to making the invisible visible through the transformation of light into color, time, and form. Her research on light is based on four principles that form the framework of her artistic thinking: time and perception; seriality; geometric order and grids; and subtlety and precision.
The exhibition at the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich brings together for the first time a representative selection of works from all phases of the artist's career, from the 1960s to the present day. This retrospective pays tribute to the multifaceted life's work of Inge Dick and coincides with her 85th birthday.
THE POETRY OF LIGHT
Inge Dick's work is a visual reflection on the significance of light and an aesthetic meditation on the passage of time. Through painting, photography, and film, she shows how precious each moment of light can be.
She began her career painting with a palette knife, first in color and then exclusively in white. Her work reveals light on the surface through finely graded grid structures. Simultaneously, she produced various series of black-and-white photographs in which the composition is based on shifting light and shadow effects.
Light is a phenomenon that sustains every living being. We cannot live without light; it is a mystery, it is my theme.
In her subsequent Polaroid series, Dick broadens her scope: light is recorded directly and rendered visible through color. This practice becomes a cinematic meditation in her later digital films and the series “jahres licht weiss”. In her most recent series of “golden images“, light not only reflects but also becomes the central element of the visual effect. Thus, an artistic path unfolds from the silence of white to the radiance of gold, carried by the idea of light as a central design element.
Throughout all these groups of works, the artist's keen sense of detail, precision, and exact execution is unmistakable. Her pictorial inventions are based on meticulous observation, patient repetition, and trust in the effectiveness of light. Inge Dick's affinity for Zen philosophy is evident in her focus on simplicity and essentials. This attitude lends her work a subtle power that touches viewers in a profound way.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Inge Dick was born in Vienna in 1941. She currently lives in Innerschwand am Mondsee (Upper Austria). Her creative journey began at a young age: in 1956, she enrolled in the Hetzendorf Fashion School, where she specialized in leather goods. She then studied for two semesters in the master class for printmaking at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna.
The artist has received numerous awards, including the Austrian Art Prize for Artistic Photography in 2020 and the Peter C. Ruppert Prize for Concrete Art in Europe in 2022. In 2024, she received the Art Prize from the Heijo and Gisela Hangen Foundation for her lifetime achievement.
With her multifaceted body of work, Inge Dick has made a fundamental contribution to contemporary abstract and concrete art.
Curator: Gerda Ridler