Peter Kogler can change audiences’ perception of space and time with his installations. Kogler’s current installation in Dirimart Gallery in Istanbul is an example of this experience.
Since the 1980s when he started to use computer technologies in his art, Kogler has developed an approach that involves a series of recurring motifs that create a mental landscape. Kogler is one of the first artists internationally to experiment with the new technology.
He not only changes the conception of space and time, he also uses objects to remind us that we are part of the living world or space. His objects, ants, brains, globes, tubes and interlacing designs are simple to understand. What he aims to show audiences that the images like ants, brains and globes can create the same reaction in every kind of human being from 90-year-old man to a 3-year-old girl.
The geometric structures that he uses in the objects are constructed entirely along mathematical lines and based purely on orthogonal frameworks.
Kogler offer variations on elements of vocabulary while retaining an aspect that is pure. Digitally modeled then organized on varied surfaces and within the space, in two and three-dimensional forms, these elements create many social metaphors.
If Kant suggests that the both space and time are priori forms of perception meaning the concepts of space and time are existent without any appeal to prior experience. Then Kogler may be the artist who can prove this to audiences. His computer-generated projects for indoor and outdoor spaces reveal his close relationship with time, space and architecture.
Kogler, in other words, tries to tell audiences the story of time and space by changing it and questioning it in very simple way. The signs he uses are comprehensible yet complex. His signs resulted from his early drawings. All the motifs that he uses have something to do with information and the flow of information.
All of them are also linked to the idea of a labyrinth. As a result, what we witness is the relationship between order and chaos.
It is a must to define the meaning behind the motifs, as they are somehow universal and timeless. Once again via motif Kogler touches the thin line between time and space. The motifs of Kogler lack any specific cultural connotation and can be interpreted in a similar way all over the world.
Just like space the motifs include something endless and infinite about them. They are unlimited because they are open on all sides.
Vocabulary and reappearance of motifs
Kogler likes to repeat things. The motifs reappear over a period of years in different forms. In his installation in Dirimart, Kogler stretches the definition of art and his motifs are made on the colorful base with geometrical shapes in them.
Kogler prefers to use the same motif in order to establish a vocabulary. However his vocabulary is semiotics. His motifs tell us the relationship between individual and a group or society.
This also suggests that Kogler’s work embodies a visual language. Kogler may lead us to question the signifier and signified. The signified can be seen by anyone else in Kogler’s work, however when it comes to define the signifier, the human brain may encounter tricks and unknown spaces.
That’s how Kogler changes the perception of space, by changing the meanings and finding the unknown spaces in the brain. His keen work opens a new dimension for audiences’ understandings and it is up to audiences to choose how to approach his work. He encourages audiences to experience a new dimension in terms of semiotics, space and time.
People need to leave their prejudices behind while viewing Kogler’s work so they can discover new things and can change the way we look at objects and space.