Katharina Grosse has always been a darling of the art world. The Berlin-based artist, who came to prominence in the 1990s, was instrumental in making spray paint sophisticated by bringing a dirty, abstract edge to the spray gun long before it littered the walls of Wynwood in Miami. Born in 1961, she has had numerous museum exhibitions around the world—she truly has one of the most coveted careers of any living, working woman artist.
His work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Gagosian's Park & 75 space in New York City called “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips.” The title of this exhibition is a form of poetry, breaking words into a meaningless game. Perhaps ironically, given that all the works on view are untitled. And they all feature Grosse's visual trademark: paint applied with an air compressor spray gun. At first, that application resulted in a layered cloud-like formation; they are now somewhat gestural and calligraphic, as we see here.
If anyone knows how to make a symphony of color, it's Grosse. But it's hard to see his work without it being painted directly on the walls, as it often is. It may be difficult for him as well, although it is probably a natural progression of his developing, acting process. In an Instagram post from 2022, he explained why he started painting on the walls in 1998 at the Kunsthalle Bern: “Before doing what many consider my first mural at the Kunsthalle Bern… , places for example where the floor meets the wall… I have begun to understand that the border can be how the point where two very different forces meet, thickens and shrinks.”
The paintings here end where the wall begins. The white box is a limitation for the artist, not a place to roam freely. But murals and installations are hard to sell to art collectors who don't want to permanently transform their spaces. They want something that they can pack neatly into a box and go on a cruise, then hang on top of whatever couch or next to whatever book bag they happen to have at the time.
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Put another way, “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips” reveals only a fraction of what Grosse is capable of. The artist's bent, rhythmic work is best viewed as an installation or, even better, in museums (easily available in Europe). Some of the most memorable moments in his career include a museum exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in 2005, where he painted walls, floors, sand piles and stairs with broad strokes of paint. Or his exhibition at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in 2020, where he covers white, snow-like sculptures with paint.
Other highlights include his spray painting of an empty warehouse for the Sydney Festival in 2018 and spray painting of an empty building on Rockaway Beach for MoMA PS1's Rockaway series in 2016.
Spray-painting the floor and ceiling is Grosse's rebellion against the art world—or at least it can feel that way. Just look at his 2023 solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, “The Bedroom,” where he sprinkles a bed and blankets in a Parisian gallery space. There is something inherently feminist about that work, much like Tracey Emin's.
Grosse's work is part color theory (Johannes Itten), part dreamlike expression (Mark Rothko) and part color therapy. It's also how the singer reacts to the music, dancing with a smoking gun. As the artist once said: “At some point, I realized that painting can combine everything at once.”
Katharina Grosse, “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips” is on view at Gagosian's Park & 75 gallery until December 21.
