Born 1961
Lives Berlin
O.T. (2008/1005L)
2008
Acrylic on canvas
240x160cm
Courtesy Galería Helga de Alvear
Since the early 1990s Katharina Grosse has engaged in a vigorous lateral expansion of the relation of painting to support. By 1998, this extended to take in the exhibition space’s architectural interior, and she adopted the spray-gun as her tool of preference. Explosive bursts of colour – emerald green, electric blue, magenta, gold – blast walls and floor alike, taking on the physical dynamics the borrowed surface has to offer, while refusing any limits it may suggest. Furniture or bookshelves were later introduced into the colour field, as were huge piles of dirt transformed into vivid mounds of pigment or, more recently, enormous psychedelic polystyrene eggs. Her creation of pictorial space is a performative act, while its reception becomes a dynamic activity. (KB)
