One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly, at MASS MoCA, North Adams
until October 31, 2011. Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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KATHARINA GROSSE reframes the basic question of painting like what is the place of painting? What are the relations between paint, colour and their support? What are the differences between painting and picture? through a language that is completely out of the ordinary and borders on the spectacular.

To create her large installations, the artist isolates herself completely from the outside world, wearing protective overalls, a breathing mask and often also earpieces, as she applies large amounts of colour with a spray gun. She describes spraying as endowed with almost aggressive force. The paint covers all existing realities and forms a new skin that always starts from a central point and spreads out over all the surrounding space. When covered with layers of paint, all the objects and elements seem to lose their original character and proportions with respect to space.

Rather than seeing the MASS MoCA installation as a site-specific project, I would say it’s more like my systems are running alongside the systems of the space. It’s as though something has moved inside the building from outside. I find the relationship of this idea to those held by certain American artists, like ROBERT SMITHSON  for example, fascinating. (…). I don’t think that a painting is a coherent, closed system that only takes place within its borders. And rather than choosing between painting being a window and painting being flat, I view everything as a window: You’re a window, the window is a window, the car is a window. For me, everything is an illusionistic surface, and painting is a mode of thought––a way to link these illusionistic elements together. That linking process constantly changes. I don’t create a set of rules through which the thinking has to happen. Neither a predetermined outcome nor the rules to realize it exist. – As told to ANTHONY BYRT for Artforum

Her examination of the fragile balance of the known and the new, attempting through the power of colour to create completely new experiences in known spatial realities is spectacularly beautiful and strangely eerie!

And good news you can view the installation presented above, One Floor Up More Highly, at MASS MoCA ((Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) until October 31, 2011