This week, I wanted to share the work of Katharina Grosse, a prolific German painter and installation artist.

She is known for the vibrant palette and exuberant gestures of her large-scale canvases and raucous installations which merge painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Wielding a spray gun instead of a brush, Grosse often paints directly on the walls, floors, or facades of her exhibition sites, altering the logic and scale of architecture itself.

In an effort to liberate her works from the Euclidian space of wall and floor, Grosse also incorporates into her multidimensional paintings a variety of unexpected objects, including beds, clothes, balloons, shaped canvases, and soil.

I saw her installation at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society in 2007 titled Atoms inside Balloons. It was a tribute of sorts to the world’s first nuclear reaction, and featured huge balloons that deflated or popped throughout the exhibition.

-Robert

images: katharina grosse

some text: Mass MOCA