Katharina Grosse’s Park & 75 Show Explores the Power of Music Through Paint

Katharina Grosse has always been a darling of the art world. The Berlin-based artist, who rose to prominence in the 1990s, was instrumental in making spray paint sophisticated by bringing a messy, abstract edge to the spray gun long before it was all over Wynwood Walls in Miami. Born in 1961, she has had countless global museum shows—indeed, she has one of the most enviable careers of any living, working woman abstract painter.

Her work is currently the subject of a solo show at Gagosian’s Park & 75 space in New York City called “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips.” The title of the exhibition is a form of poetry, breaking down words into nonsensical wordplay. Perhaps ironically, given that all of the works on view are untitled. They also all feature Grosse’s visual trademark: paint applied with an air compressor spray gun. At first, that application resulted in cloud-like shapes that were layered; now they are more gestural and somewhat calligraphic, as we see here.

If anyone knows how to make a symphony of color, it’s Grosse. But it’s hard to see her work not painted directly on the walls, as it usually is. It may be hard for her, too, though perhaps it’s the natural progression of her improvisational, performative process. In an Instagram post from 2022, she explained why she started painting on walls back in 1998 at the Kunsthalle Bern: “Before making what many consider my first wall painting at Kunsthalle Bern… I felt unsatisfied by how my brush was stopped by a surface’s changes, the places for example where the floor met the wall… I’ve started to understand how a border can be a point at which two very different energies converge, get denser and shrink.”

The paintings here end where the wall begins. The white box is a constraint to an artist, not a space to roam free. But wall paintings and installations are hard to sell to art collectors who don’t want to permanently transform their spaces. They want something they can neatly pack in a box and ship, then hang over whatever couch or beside whatever bookcase they’re living with at the time.

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Put another way, “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips” only reveals a slice of what Grosse is capable of. The artist’s curving, rhythmic work is best viewed in installation form or, even better, in museums (easier to find in Europe). Some memorable moments from her career include a museum show at Palais de Tokyo in 2005, where she painted the walls, floors, piles of sand and staircases in broad swaths of paint. Or her show at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in 2020, where she covered white, iceberg-like sculptures in paint.

Other highlights include her draping an empty warehouse in spray-painted fabrics for the Sydney Festival in 2018 and spray-painting an empty building at Rockaway Beach for MoMA PS1’s Rockaway series in 2016.

Spray-painting floors and ceilings is Grosse’s rebellion against the art world—or at least it can feel that way. Just look at her 2023 solo show at Galerie Max Hetzler, “The Bedroom,” where she spray-painted a bed and blankets in the gallery’s Paris location. There is something inherently feminist about that work, which echoes that of Tracey Emin.

Grosse’s work is part color theory (Johannes Itten), part dreamlike expression (Mark Rothko) and part color therapy. It’s also a way the artist responds to music, dancing with the spray gun. As the artist once said: “At some point, I realized painting can bring everything together in a single moment.”

Katharina Grosse, “Pie Sell, Lee Slip, Eel Lips” is on view at Gagosian’s Park & 75 gallery through December 21.