Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse loves playing with paradoxes. She considers her painting as a field in which contradictory experiences can occur and the conventional logic of thinking about painting can be questioned. Such is also the case with this oil painting from 1995. From a distance, it would appear to be a monochrome painting evenly painted in brown. Only on closer inspection do the fine vertically interwoven traces of the paintbrush’s hairs reveal themselves. The overall effect of the color results from sections in green and red that stand out against a dark brown-black background. While the uppermost layer of paint runs vertically, a horizontal layer of brushstrokes remains apparent beneath it. The translucency is a consequence of pressure applied to the brush that spreads the brush hairs apart to expose the background. The result is a seemingly paradoxical visual impression of density versus delicacy, of modulated versus pure hues, and of individual versus multiple colors.