China Daily Global Edition (USA)
German artist sprays colors on Guangzhou
German artist Katharina Grosse says when she was a child, she often played a game in her head before getting up in the morning. She says she imagined a painting brush with which she would cover all the shadows on the wall, the windowsill, the lamp and elsewhere.
Years later, Grosse would develop that childhood “obsession” into an individual approach to painting that is central to her creations. But rather than grabbing a brush from her childhood imagination, Grosse primarily uses a spray gun to spread vibrant colors directly on the interiors and exteriors of buildings and other objects.
Grosse uses a rich scheme of colors, which presents an explosive visual effect at first sight, and then gives a soothing touch as one looks at her work for a while.
She often embraces the audience in an all-immersive environment — they can walk into her work, step on it, get lost in it or be absorbed by it.
And her work can engage viewers in a discussion about space and boundaries.
Grosse is now inviting people in Guangzhou into her colorful world of a maze at a solo exhibition, Mumbling Mud, at chi K11 art space through June 2.
The exhibition first came to chi K11 art museum, Shanghai. And during its three-month duration which ended Feb 24, visitors commented on social media that they were caught by the dynamics and mystery built by colors, as well as a sense of clashes between Grosse’s painted works and the environment.
Stomach, a stunning work shown in Shanghai, is also installed at the Guangzhou exhibition.
For the work, hundreds of meters of fabric, on which Grosse orchestras a symphony of colors, falls from the ceiling of the art space and covers the floor to form an encircled drape.
The heavy, coarse cloth and a labyrinth of folds on it make people entering feel both embraced and lost, as they try to find their way out of the drape through several exits.
When they succeed, they are confronted by another work, Showroom, in which colors are sprayed on a set of furniture and a rank of shelves filled with books and magazines donated by people.
Grosse allows the audience to revise their perceptions of painting, sculpture and architecture. The exhibition’s curator Venus Lau says visitors are “likely to experience an overwhelming ungroundedness” in Grosse’s works.
Grosse says she does not think that a painted work should be limited to the canvas, and it “has always been multidimensional” for her.
“Even when I was a student, when I painted, I would always paint on different kinds of surfaces and objects very organically, and then add other things,” she says.
“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.
“I believe that the artist, the work of art, the site and the viewer are entangled in a relationship of mutual dependence, which rise to an ecology.”
Grosse began using the spray gun to paint across surfaces besides canvas in the late 1990s.
So, she sprayed dark green on the upper corner of two adjacent walls and also spread it onto the ceiling to complete a work at Kunsthalle Bern, an art exposition hall in Switzerland in 1998. gives
And she then turned a dilapidated aquatic center in New York into an outdoor installation in 2016, by spraying red and white onto the architecture and the ground it sits on.
The work, reflecting the sunset view of the area where the center is located, was displayed for more than a year.
Grosse’s creations show that colors can appear anywhere, “independently and without generating fixed meanings or serving specific functions”.
She says: “I want to infuse a certain energy or attention or transformational aspect into a situation or space, without discussion of whether it can be, may be or has a right to be — somewhere.”
Those who are new to Grosse’s type of painting tend to view her work as graffiti, while the artist says she is doing quite the contrary.
“Graffiti is often writing and marking a claim, that is, marking a border. I am painting over the border, that is, expanding the area rather than closing it off,” she says.
“I feel border districts are zones of extremely dramatic theatricality, because that is where highly diverse interests overlap, intertwine and are compelled within a narrow space to engage in competition, to exist in simultaneity.”