Lot Essay
Since the 1990s, Katharina Grosse has built up a repertoire consisting of large painted canvasses and bright acrylic colours sprayed onto both interior and exterior walls, ceilings and floors. Her working methods are related to Colour Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism, between Impressionism and graffiti, performance, process and installation art. She investigates the limits of painting by using different concepts belonging to contemporary and traditional artistic expression, in which making and presenting paintings continues to occupy an important place. The spray gun and the spray can are the tools that Grosse employs. Canvasses, strips of paper, walls and ceilings, as well as organic materials and objects are her supports. It has little in common with the traditional way of painting but everything that is characteristic of painting - light, colour, composition, texture and painterly treatment - also underlies her art practice. Her exhibition Holey Residue at de Appel in 2006 followed a series of projects in such venues as UCLA, Los Angeles; The White Cube, London; Magasin 3, Stockholm and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and public spaces like Toronto Airport, Canada. In 2003, Grosse transformed the outside walls of the Berlinische Galerie into a gigantic abstract painting. Grosse studied at the Düsseldorfer Akademie from 1986 till 1990.