Helga de Alvear

Katharina Grosse

11 Nov 2010 - 09 Jan 2011

© Katharina Grosse
Untitled, 2010
acrylic on canvas
300 x 388 cm
KATHARINA GROSSE
“Come niño come”

November 11th 2010 - January 9th 2011
Opening hours: 11:00 - 14:00 and 16:30 - 20:30.
Opening: Thursday November 11th 2010, 20:00.

Galería Helga de Alvear presents the recent work of German artist Katharina Grosse (Freiburg, Germany, 1961), whose production has become a reference in the new practices of painting.
Since the 1980's, Katharina Grosse has proposed the expansion of the limits of painting both in physical terms - the support material - and in her understanding of pictorial practice. No doubt, the fundamental element in her work is colour, generally bright and contrasted, along with her outstanding handling of technique.
In her early work, she applied paint by following the plane: vertical and horizontal lines are superimposed in layers, conforming a grid. Her pictorial line is evident and thorough, although, starting with the beginning of the 1990's, she starts using a compressor, which emphasises gestuality and helps her dissolve the physical limitations of the support.
This, in turn, allows her to have access to increasingly large-scale pieces, leaving behind the limitations of the canvas or paper, in order to expand into threedimensional bodies, and to even extend into the exhibition space itself. On different occasions, she has painted the complete surface of the exhibition rooms she has worked in, but also the objects she comes across: books, beds, tables, but also stones or mounds.
Two important additions appear in her more recent work. On the one hand, there's the texture created by covering the canvas with earth, which is also painted on. Part of it remains attached to the painting, and is integrated in the piece, while the part that falls away leaves a negative trace on the level immediately below.
Finally, she has produced some of her latest interventions on huge geometric forms with angular and sharp shapes, characterised by curved lines and arabesques, almost as if the supporting surface followed the fluid strokes of the painterly line.
Katharina Grosse has exhibited at Magasin 3 in Stockholm (Sweden) in 2004, at the Serralves Museum in Porto (Portugal) in 2007, at the Galleria Civica di Modena (Italy) in 2008, and at the Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin (Germany) in 2010.
 

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