Lot 647 D

Since 1998, Katharina Grosse's preferred work tool is the spray gun, with which she discovers the way to new possibilities of expression. From then on, she worked with aerosol, a gas that is mixed with colour pigments. The result is a silken, transparent colour application of soft transitions, at times running and dripping, floating like a tinge covering the ground like a veil. Almost the entire colour spectrum is used, sometimes in daring combinations. Grosse does not mix colour but stratifies it in wafer-thin layers on top of each other. This results in an extremly fine colour degredation whereby the colour application is never completely opaque.
The spray-painted works are abstract, masterly and spontaneous gestures forming amorphous phenomena. The spontaneity expresses a lack of predictability in the creative process due to the fact that the colour application and the expansion of the paint cannot be controlled as precisely as with a brushstroke. Thus, it is a more direct working method: Seeing, thinking and painting proceed simultaneously and the colour, controlled by Katharina Grosse's body movement, also opens up space beyond the picture carrier.
'The way I imagine a spray-paint work before I start is totally different from what I do in the end. I might have clever ideas to start with but once I am at it, I don't just carry out my mental conceptions. Everything I do in a painting is based on a certain train of thought, followed by the next and so on - that's why it is totally different from photography.' (Katharina Grosse im Gespräch mit Jonathan Watkins, Wie man mit dem Malen anfängt und aufhört, in: Susanne Böller (ed.), Cool Puppen, Der weisse Saal trifft sich im Wald, Ich wüsste jetzt nichts, exhib.cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham et al., Wolfratshausen 2002, p.27).