Katharina Grosse
03 May - 29 Jun 2013
© Katharina Grosse
Untitled, 2013
Acrylic on carpet, sofa, aluminum
carpet Ø 400 cm, sofa 80 x 233 x 70 cm
aluminium 42 x 93 x 132 cm
Untitled, 2013
acrylic on canvas
201 x 135 cm
Untitled, 2013
Acrylic on carpet, sofa, aluminum
carpet Ø 400 cm, sofa 80 x 233 x 70 cm
aluminium 42 x 93 x 132 cm
Untitled, 2013
acrylic on canvas
201 x 135 cm
KATHARINA GROSSE
Snakes lie between her and the shore
3 May - 29 June 2013
In Katharina Grosses’ fourth solo exhibition in our gallery, we will be presenting her latest works on canvas accompanied by a spatial situation in which a rug and a sofa become media for painting.
Katharina Grosse has continued to occupy an important position in international painting since the early 1990s thanks to her oeuvre and philosophy, which are characterized by continuous renewal, variable perspectives, and the call for a sense of possibility in the way Musil intended. She questions a Western tradition that takes what appears to be objective, abstract, and static as points of reference so it can develop a kind of binding force out of these conventions. In her body of work, the beholder encounters a pictorial form whose openness, enormous ability to connect, and variability eludes the traditional system and whose inception no longer relies on an abstraction of the world of objects.
Synchronizing non-simultaneous elements in the moment of perception is what draws Grosse to painting: the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. She strives for the spatial expansion of painting in her extension thereof through the spray gun – a painting medium that allows her to “land” the paint and gaze simultaneously.
Color brings into play the possibility of comprehending movement (also in thought) or extension in space and time (or of the gaze). Color is thus merely applied for its own sake and is not loaded with any form of association. For Grosse – and, not least, for the beholder – it opens a path for time, movement, and the gaze, because the beholder always tries to comprehend the painter’s movements.
This is true for her works on canvas as well as her objects and in situ paintings. Thus, there is not just one correct perspective – either intellectual or spatial.
But what happens to the objects on which Katharina Grosse paints? What happens to the paintings? When Grosse applies paint to a Modernist design classic such as the sofa model 578 by Florence Knoll (design 1954), as she does in our exhibition, she lets two paradigms collide. She comments, applies, criticizes, and visualizes. Although painting and the object are mutually dependent, they are also autonomous entities. The painting reveals both itself and the sofa; it relies on the surface for its visibility. This may be the case where the object has been concealed, but a direct impact has been prevented – just like blinking is an interruption of the gaze, but not the disappearance of what was seen before. At least, that is what we assume.
Grosse’s exhibition titles represent, if they represent anything, a fragment of a narrative structure.
They encourage us to explore (among countless other things, of course) two ideas: the seemingly random process of the “auto-completion” of human perception, and the joy and/or freedom that comes from doing anything but.
KATHARINA GROSSE was born in Freiburg in Breisgau in 1961. Solo exhibitions (selection): 2013 Wunderblock, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Two Younger Women Come In And Pull Out A Table, De Pont, Tilburg / 2011 In Seven Days Time, Kunstmuseum Bonn / 2010 Installationen und Arbeiten auf Papier, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg im Breisgau / 2009 Shadow Box, Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany; One Floor Up More Highly, MassMoCA, North Adams / 2005 Constructions à cru, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. Group exhibitions (selection): 2011 The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction from 1960s to Now, Tate St Ives, St. Ives, Great Britain; Kosmos Rudolf Steiner, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic / 2005 Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. She has been a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2010. She lives and works in Berlin.
Snakes lie between her and the shore
3 May - 29 June 2013
In Katharina Grosses’ fourth solo exhibition in our gallery, we will be presenting her latest works on canvas accompanied by a spatial situation in which a rug and a sofa become media for painting.
Katharina Grosse has continued to occupy an important position in international painting since the early 1990s thanks to her oeuvre and philosophy, which are characterized by continuous renewal, variable perspectives, and the call for a sense of possibility in the way Musil intended. She questions a Western tradition that takes what appears to be objective, abstract, and static as points of reference so it can develop a kind of binding force out of these conventions. In her body of work, the beholder encounters a pictorial form whose openness, enormous ability to connect, and variability eludes the traditional system and whose inception no longer relies on an abstraction of the world of objects.
Synchronizing non-simultaneous elements in the moment of perception is what draws Grosse to painting: the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. She strives for the spatial expansion of painting in her extension thereof through the spray gun – a painting medium that allows her to “land” the paint and gaze simultaneously.
Color brings into play the possibility of comprehending movement (also in thought) or extension in space and time (or of the gaze). Color is thus merely applied for its own sake and is not loaded with any form of association. For Grosse – and, not least, for the beholder – it opens a path for time, movement, and the gaze, because the beholder always tries to comprehend the painter’s movements.
This is true for her works on canvas as well as her objects and in situ paintings. Thus, there is not just one correct perspective – either intellectual or spatial.
But what happens to the objects on which Katharina Grosse paints? What happens to the paintings? When Grosse applies paint to a Modernist design classic such as the sofa model 578 by Florence Knoll (design 1954), as she does in our exhibition, she lets two paradigms collide. She comments, applies, criticizes, and visualizes. Although painting and the object are mutually dependent, they are also autonomous entities. The painting reveals both itself and the sofa; it relies on the surface for its visibility. This may be the case where the object has been concealed, but a direct impact has been prevented – just like blinking is an interruption of the gaze, but not the disappearance of what was seen before. At least, that is what we assume.
Grosse’s exhibition titles represent, if they represent anything, a fragment of a narrative structure.
They encourage us to explore (among countless other things, of course) two ideas: the seemingly random process of the “auto-completion” of human perception, and the joy and/or freedom that comes from doing anything but.
KATHARINA GROSSE was born in Freiburg in Breisgau in 1961. Solo exhibitions (selection): 2013 Wunderblock, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Two Younger Women Come In And Pull Out A Table, De Pont, Tilburg / 2011 In Seven Days Time, Kunstmuseum Bonn / 2010 Installationen und Arbeiten auf Papier, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg im Breisgau / 2009 Shadow Box, Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany; One Floor Up More Highly, MassMoCA, North Adams / 2005 Constructions à cru, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. Group exhibitions (selection): 2011 The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction from 1960s to Now, Tate St Ives, St. Ives, Great Britain; Kosmos Rudolf Steiner, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic / 2005 Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. She has been a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2010. She lives and works in Berlin.