ART CITIES:Baden Baden-Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse, who has been considered one of the leading artists of her generation for many years now, adopts a very striking position. Her painting transcends, explodes and overshadows any kind of surface and turns it into a base on which to paint. In other words, it is directed at every surface in a room – walls, ceiling, floor – as well as the bodies and objects in the room.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Museum Frieder Burda Archive
In her exhibition at Museum Frieder Burda, Katharina Grosse concentrates on panel paintings, more the classical form of painting, but expands these in size and shape to hitherto unseen dimensions. Through structuring elements such as lines and shading, but also through sprayed paint, her works seem to unfold in different ways, sometimes intensely concrete, sometimes blurred and unfocussed. Katharina Grosse often leaves behind the limits of what can be rationally described for the sake of a more indirect effect of the paint strokes, the vague, indiscriminate shapes and the unsuspected spaces that emerge in her painting. Thus, the spatial installation “Untitled (Ellipse)“ (2009) creates its own location, providing a special stage through its spherical, oval shape and the sheer size of the painting. Placing her painting in the context of Richard Meier’s architecture heightens the contrast between rationalism and Utopia. The limits of the room, are suspended in favor of a dialogue between the coloured shapes, a dialogue that develops not only in the individual paintings but also between the different paintings. Because in this exhibition, Katharina Grosse is showing works spanning her entire career from the beginning of the 1990s right up to today. The openness of the architecture provides for fascinating perspectives and combinations.
Info: Museum Frieder Burda, Lichtentaler Allee 8b, Baden-Baden, Duration:11/6-9/10/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.museum-frieder-burda.de
