Katharina Grosse

The performative aspect of Katharina Grosse's painting comes to the fore in her choice of colors and the memories they evoke. The central pictorial element is a sprayed iridescent line that spreads across the picture plane like an uncontrollable aurora borealis. Towards the bottom of the image, the snaking line picks up purple hues, while towards the top, dark green-tinted backgrounds become apparent. The compressed serpentine movement alternates between various color fields, shifting between matte and iridescent areas of color. The differing aggregates of the spray paint ranging between clouds of spray and liquid, mist and puddle become visible. In interweaving different layers of paint in her work and the effect, depending on the viewer’s point of view, shifting between one color and the next before their eyes, Grosse has created the prerequisites for an openness of form and color, enabling things to be perceived in differing ways simultaneously and permitting such impressions to coexist on an equal footing.