Katharina Grosse

A painting is simply a screen between the producer and the spectator where both can look at the thought processes residing on the screen from different angles and points in time. It enables me to look at the residue of my thinking.
—Katharina Grosse

Gagosian is pleased to present new paintings and sculpture by Katharina Grosse. A prominent figure on the international art circuit, this is her first gallery exhibition in New York and at Gagosian, following a series of significant public commissions in the United States in recent years.

Grosse approaches painting as an experience in immersive subjectivity. With a spray gun, she distances the artistic act from the hand, stylizing gesture as a propulsive mark. The resulting pictures are distinct, but never predetermined. Spatial tensions rise through shifts in chromatic temperature. Challenging boundaries, she reintroduces her body as an active agent within a vision of contemporary existence that is at once physically isolated and densely networked.

Embracing the events and incidents that arise as she paints, Grosse opens up surfaces and spaces to the countless perceptual possibilities of the medium. While she is widely known for her temporary and permanent in situ work, which she paints directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes, her approach begins in the studio. With calculated focus, she allows new patterns and procedures in her paintings to emerge from action, further multiplying this potential with stencils cut from cardboard and thick foam rubber—tools with which to develop further cuts, layers, and perspectival depths. Grosse’s gestures unfold all at the same time in unmixed acrylic colors, engulfing the viewer in a toxic sublime.

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