Katharina Grosse's huge work “Untitled,” 2012, two blocks of colorfully painted Styrofoam lying one atop the other at the entrance of Art Cologne, is characteristic of the Berliner’s outsize ambition. For more than a decade, she has experimented with the spatial possibilities of painting, never shying away from the monumental — an approach she discussed before the fair with Coline Milliard, along with other aspects of her process.
What was your starting point for this piece?
It was developed for “They had Taken Things Along to Eat Together,” a show I did at Johann König in 2012. The title is a stage direction from a play. It has nothing to do with my work, but I like this idea that there is a certain activity: you meet friends, everybody has brought something to eat, and this makes up a new meal. My works are very much about acting and thinking at the same time. They are not something you merely look at — they make you move around. All of a sudden you find yourself acting with the work.
You began spray painting objects in 1998. What got you started?
I was thinking that maybe a painting should use space differently from the way a sculpture does. You look at things with your eyes, and you can reach lots of places with them: you can reach up high in the corner, you can reach the ceiling, you can reach further out, through the window onto the next building and so on. So the act of using your eyes and connecting your body with your vision was super interesting to me. Spray painting for me is the embodiment of the gaze.
Do you see your practice erasing the traditional distinction between painting and sculpture?
It’s very hybrid thinking. The painting can’t exist without the surface, which is sometimes multidimensional, nor can the surface have the same life without the painting.
How important do you consider the size of your work?
It’s not really a matter of size, it’s more a matter of scale. The relationship between the different components is really interesting to me. I’m always trying to make the smallest version of a large work, and sometimes it turns out to be 20 meters long. But it’s not only about the actual painted surfaces themselves, the so-called “artwork.” There’s always a very big invisible component, a relationship between the work and what it doesn’t show. When you start talking to museum people about these, you can convince them that your work is actually small. It doesn’t work all the time, though!
Have you ever been surprised by what painting could be or do?
Yes, particularly by the way the tools — the spray gun, but even a ladder or a chair — make your body bigger; they propel you onto another scale.