Katharina Grosse was born in Germany in the year 1961. She has been an artist for many years, studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a fine arts academy in Germany. (Art21) She now teaches at this institute. Katharina paints using a spray gun with acrylic paint. It allows her to cover large areas with paint in unique designs, unlike any other artist. She references the spray gun as an extension of herself. She believes it gives her a larger reach, enlarges her body, and helps her paintings be completed faster. She uses many distinctive techniques, often using warehouses to hold her works of art. She can cover the walls and floor of buildings, in and outdoors, with paint. Using a spray gun this way allows her to transition between different surfaces fast and seamlessly. She chooses to paint with an entirely different style. Katharina proposes different ways to look at space of a room with her artwork. It is her goal, and a challenge to make painting visible and a regular part of our life. (Artist Interview with South London Gallery) When she paints, she says everything around her slows down. By using one tool, and only several colors of paint, she has minimal options. This allows her to slow the mental strain of making art, and flow within her gift of creativity. She said, “the architecture space is materialized, and painting is psychological” in an interview. She uses architectural surfaces like windows as components of her art. She uses windows to create techniques so that her paint stops at the edges of windows or other architecture causing her audience to wonder how the painting got there. (Artist Interview with Moca Cleveland) She uses a psychedelic and dynamic way of painting to create illusions. Each piece of art is abstract so that the audience is immersed in the art. Rooms are coated in layers of rainbow paint which gives the viewers a distinctive viewpoint of each section. The art is all about perspective, so the same work can be viewed from different places and have different sizes and interpretations. In her work, “One Floor Up More Highly,” she has spray painted sand and rocks within a building. She is experimenting with texture and materials to create unique images and sculptures. In another exhibit, she has a work titled, “Two Young Women Come and Pull Out a Table.” This piece contains spray painted spheres hanging all over the room. In “Things They Had Taken Along To Eat Together,” there are a spray-painted couch and large rock sculptures in different colors. The title sparks the idea that the couch could represent a love interest that she no longer has. It causes the question ‘why’ to be asked. Why would someone spray paint a couch? She leaves these questions to those enjoying her exhibit. I think a part of her doesn’t know why, but it works. Other pieces have the same oddity to them, and many are untitled. Others have very odd names, shapes, and locations.“Shadow” looks like large disks that have been cut and spray painted. Like all artists, she hopes to convey emotion, yet she does so in a unique way that is all her own. (Application for Curatorship; Katharina Grosse) Explosions of color litter surfaces. By spraying her acrylic paint in sometimes abandoned locations, it resembles vandalism. She is using the urban setting and idea of graffiti in a modern way.
Works Cited
https://art21.org/artist/katharina-grosse/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t1vOhQvBI4 (Artist Interview with South London Gallery)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIy9po_ZLKM (Artist Interview with Moca Cleveland)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E12TrAvOem4 (Application for Curatorship; Katharina Grosse)
Post by Kayla DeMarcus
