About
A painting is simply a screen between the producer and the spectator where both can look at the thought processes residing on the screen from different angles and points in time. It enables me to look at the residue of my thinking.
—Katharina Grosse
Widely known for her in situ paintings, in which explosive color is sprayed directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes, Katharina Grosse embraces the events and incidents that arise as she works, opening up surfaces and spaces to the countless perceptual possibilities of the medium. Approaching painting as an experience in immersive subjectivity, she uses a spray gun, distancing the artistic act from the hand, and stylizing gesture as a propulsive mark.
Born in Freiberg im Breisgau, Germany, Grosse began painting at an early age, always attuned to the ways that color and light merged with thought itself. In her works on canvas from the 1990s, she juxtaposed colors of various densities and temperatures, repeating vertical, transparent brushstrokes. These led to related works painted directly onto the wall, where she lined hallways and staircases in sublime fields of artificial color. Introducing the spray gun as a painting tool, she began to paint across architectural interiors and exteriors. She produced her first work, a monochrome, using this technique at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, in 1998, spray painting the upper corner of a gallery in a deep green that spread partially down two adjacent walls and onto the ceiling. In 2000 Grosse became a professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee; and she taught the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf from 2010–2018.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Grosse combined the intersecting streaks of previous works with the cloud-like forms and mists made possible by the spray gun. The in situ paintings expanded in scale as she explored the liquidity and vast reach of the medium. In 2004, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, she sprayed the gallery interior along with clothing, papers, eggs, and coins scattered across the floor; and in 2005, at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, she hung two huge canvases on the wall: one already painted, and one blank. She painted the latter on site, as well as the wall on which it hung. She then took down the painted canvas and leaned it against the wall on the floor, leaving a blank white rectangle.
For Grosse, there are no distinctions between painting, sculpture, and architecture. In addition to painting on canvases and over found materials like buildings and trees she also creates large polyurethane, Styrofoam, and cast-metal sculptures that act as abstract armatures for her paintings. Her in situ painting Untitled Trumpet was included in the Biennale di Venezia, in 2015, and Museum Wiesbaden, Germany, presented a major survey of her works on paper that same year. In 2016, adding to a sequence of significant public commissions in the US, she created a work for MoMA PS1’s Rockaway! series at Fort Tilden in the Rockaways, New York, transforming a derelict aquatics center with sprays of red, white, and magenta. The following year, Gagosien presented Grosse’s first solo exhibition in New York, featuring major works from several interconnected suites of paintings, and one cast-metal sculpture. In these canvases, monadic forms migrate from one painting to another, appearing in new layers or fusing into clusters that advance and retreat. The paintings record Grosse’s ongoing reflections on color, density, and velocity, as well as her use of stencils applied directly to the surface throughout the painting process.
In her most recent site-responsive paintings, Grosse has incorporated lengths of painted fabric, draped from the ceiling and spilling onto the floor, thus adding even more dimensionality to her immersive paintings. The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Metres, Then It Stopped (2018) for Carriageworks, Sydney, was comprised of more than 27,000 square feet of suspended fabric, draped, knotted and folded across and through the nineteenth century industrial architecture of the building. In Wunderbild (2018), for the National Gallery in Prague, Grosse produced an imposing enfilade of paintings on loose cloth, draped from the walls on two sides. Painted on the floor of her Berlin studio, Wunderbild creates a bridge between Grosse’s studio canvases and in situ paintings, and its aqueous fields of color are punctuated by white palimpsests of negative space. This development continued in Prototypes of Imagination, at Gagosien Britannia Street (2018), in which an entire wall of the gallery was covered by a sheet of painted fabric, asserting new spatial and temporal transformations.
Photo: Mitro Hood, Baltimore Museum of Art
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Exhibitions
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Summer 2023
The Summer 2023 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring Richard Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, actor, New York, May 6, 1957 on its cover.
In Conversation
Katharina Grosse and Graham Bader
On the occasion of her exhibition Katharina Grosse: Repetitions without Origin at Gagosien, Beverly Hills, the artist spoke with art historian Graham Bader, associate professor of art history at Rice University, about the throughlines in her practice.
Gagosien Quarterly Films
Katharina Grosse: Think Big!
From October 21 to 23, 2021, Gagosien Quarterly presented a special English-language online screening of Claudia Müller’s Katharina Grosse: Think Big!
David Reed
David Reed and Katharina Grosse met at Reed’s New York studio in the fall of 2019 to talk about his newest paintings, the temporal aspects of both artists’ practice, and some of their mutual inspirations.
Katharina Grosse: The Movement Comes from Outside
Katharina Grosse discusses her exhibition Is It You? at the Baltimore Museum of Art with Jona Lueddeckens. They consider what sets the Baltimore installation apart from its predecessors, and how Grosse sees the relationship of the human body to her immersive environments as opposed to her canvases.
Katharina Grosse: I see what she did there
On the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Terry R. Myers muses on the manipulations of time in Grosse’s work.
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Summer 2020
The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
Katharina Grosse: Mumbling Mud
We take a visual tour through Katharina Grosse’s Mumbling Mud and the installation process behind it as the artist discusses the effects of the work’s merging of built and painted space.
Trouvé and Grosse: Villa Medici
Tatiana Trouvé and Katharina Grosse discuss their exhibition Le numerose irregolarità, at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici, with curator Chiara Parisi.
Gagosien Quarterly Spring 2018
The Spring 2018 Gagosien Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
Katharina Grosse at Carriageworks
On the occasion of Katharina Grosse’s latest in situ painting The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Metres, Then It Stopped, at Carriageworks, Sydney, a series of video interviews with the artist was created.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Frieze Seoul 2023
September 7–9, 2023, booth C14
COEX, Seoul
www.frieze.com
Gagosien is pleased to participate in Frieze Seoul 2023 with a presentation of contemporary works by gallery artists, including Derrick Adams, Georg Baselitz, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Jadé Fadojutimi, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Jennifer Guidi, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Alexandria Smith, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Richard Wright, among others.
Coinciding with the fair is the arrival of Jiyoung Lee, who was recently appointed to lead the gallery’s operations in Korea. Lee joins Gagosien following nearly fifteen years based in Seoul working on behalf of both Korean and Western galleries. Her appointment builds on the gallery’s establishment of a business entity in Korea last year, and provides for expanded activities in the region.
Gagosien’s booth at Frieze Seoul 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jadé Fadojutimi, © Jen Guidi, © Alexandria Smith, © Mehdi Ghadyanloo, © Rick Lowe Studio, © Jonas Wood, Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Talk
The Artists and the Collector
Katharina Grosse, Firelei Báez, Komal Shah
Thursday, June 15, 2023, 3pm
Hall 1 Auditorium, Messeplatz, Basel
artbasel.com
As part of the 2023 Art Basel Conversations program, artists Katharina Grosse and Firelei Báez and collector Komal Shah will speak about the challenges they have had to overcome to present female perspectives in their respective practices and collections, as well as discuss possible frameworks needed to address underrepresentation. Moderated by Mark Godfrey, the discussion will offer insight into the connections between individuals shaped by their shared vision of art and underscore the importance of the artist-collector relationship in the art world. The event is free to attend.
Katharina Grosse, Untitled, 2023 © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany 2023
Art Fair
Taipei Dangdai 2023
May 12–14, 2023, booth E10
Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center
taipeidangdai.com
Gagosien is pleased to participate in Taipei Dangdai 2023, presenting works by Louise Bonnet, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Yayoi Kusama, Deana Lawson, Takashi Murakami, Sterling Ruby, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Kon Trubkovich, Mary Weatherford, Cameron Welch, Anna Weyant, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Gagosien’s booth at Taipei Dangdai 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Mark Grotjahn; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2023 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Ringo Cheung
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Katharina Grosse in
Collezione MAXXI. Lo spazio dell’immagine
Opened November 21, 2018
Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome
www.maxxi.art
The spirit and the identity of the museum are being renewed with a display of more than thirty works by twenty-six artists. Dedicated to the museum’s new acquisitions, this group show aims to create a counterpoint between the abstract and the figurative. Work by Katharina Grosse is included.
Katharina Grosse, Ingres Wood Seven, 2017 © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany 2019 Photo: Jens Ziehe
Closed
Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022
March 3–June 25, 2023
Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
www.kunstmuseumbern.ch
This exhibition explores Katharina Grosse’s studio-based paintings, from her earliest works in the 1990s to her most recent. The show highlights the role that thirty-seven paintings have played throughout her career in her experiments with the aesthetic potentials and physical and optical properties of color and paint. This exhibition has traveled from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis.
Installation view, Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, September 23, 2022–January 23, 2023. Artwork © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany 2023. Photo: Josh White
Closed
Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022
Returns, Revisions, Inventions
September 23, 2022–January 23, 2023
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis
www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu
This exhibition explores Katharina Grosse’s studio-based paintings, from her earliest works in the 1990s to her most recent. The show highlights the role that thirty-seven paintings have played throughout her career in her experiments with the aesthetic potentials and physical and optical properties of color and paint.
Installation view, Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, September 23, 2022–January 23, 2023. Artwork © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany 2023. Photo: Josh White
Closed
Katharina Grosse
Apollo, Apollo
April 23–November 27, 2022
Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia
www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr
Created specifically for Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia, Katharina Grosse’s installation Apollo, Apollo features a composite image of the artist’s hands printed on a metallic mesh fabric draped across the floor and wall. Depicting a moment where boundaries—between the artist’s body and the flowing material, with its transparent, opaque, and reflective surfaces—blur, the work opens a gateway to a dreamlike world in which visitors question their own perceptions of reality and illusion. Produced within the framework of Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Hors-les-murs program, the exhibition is a collateral event of the 59th Biennale di Venezia.
Installation view, Katharina Grosse: Apollo, Apollo, Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia, April 23–November 27, 2022. Artwork © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild, Bonn, Germany 2022. Photo: Jens Ziehe
Press
Katharina Grosse: Touching How and Why and Where by Pearl Fontaine
Whitewall
March 20, 2023
Online
PDF
With brushes or spray guns, Katharina Grosse exhibition in St. Louis shows growth in career by Jane Henderson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 29, 2022
Online
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Katharina Grosse Expands the Medium of Painting in Response to Its Environment by Eliza Jordan
Whitewall
September 6, 2022
Online
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La Fondation Louis Vuitton inspire une œuvre in situ à Katharina Grosse by Stéphane Renault
Art Newspaper France
August 29, 2022
Online
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The Big Review: Fugues in Colour at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris by Eleanor Nairne
Art Newspaper
May 31, 2022
Online
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Fondation Louis Vuitton’s stunning new art installation at Venice by Helena Lee
Harper’s Bazaar UK
May 16, 2022
Online
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Katharina Grosse’s shimmering, iridescent installation envelops Espace Louis Vuitton in Venice by Charlotte Jansen
Wallpaper
April 26, 2022
Online
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‘How Can a Painting Appear in the World Other Than as a Canvas?’: Painter Katharina Grosse on Bringing the Ancient Form Into 3-D by Kate Brown
Artnet
August 12, 2020
Online
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Three exhibitions to see in Shanghai this weekend by Anna Brady
Art Newspaper
November 9, 2018
Online
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Under the influence: Katharina Grosse, Sarah Sze, and Hans Ulrich Obrist by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Art Basel
September 20, 2018
Online
PDF