Untitled

Katharina Grosse is a painter, but she rarely touches a brush. Her practice is instead centred around the industrial spray-gun, which she uses with astounding dexterity and invention on surfaces that range from intimately scaled canvases to walls, floors, sculptures and enormous outdoor murals. In these two untitled works on aluminium (both 2004), Grosse weaves fluorescent rays and bands together into mesmeric chromatic fields, with pinks, oranges, greens and yellows interacting in an abstract dance of layered colour and form. There is something of the fluid excitement of surfing – Grosse’s other major passion – in these oscillating waves of hue. The magic of painting, she says, lies in its state of flux. ‘Movements that have been painted first and last are both simultaneously present on the image field. There is no linear or causal hierarchy of activities in a painting … it requires a mind that is agile and ready to give up an adopted point of view at any moment for the next potential constellation or reading. Everything can become anything at any minute’ (K. Grosse, quoted in E. Wasik, ‘Katharina Grosse sticks to her guns,’ Interview Magazine, 4 November 2014).