Katharina Grosse’s Public Art: Brilliant, Saturated Color

January 31, 2014  |   Feature,   Initiatives,   World
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A new sprawling and spectacular public art by German artist Katharina Grosse in Downtown Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center is the first New York destination to host the artist’s otherworldly spin on street art: the temporary project called “Katharina Grosse: Just Two of Us” will be on view through 14 September 2014.

“Just Two of Us” project brings the artist’s bright, jagged brushstrokes to life, intertwining the colorful forms with the green space of Brooklyn's MetroTech Center’s wooded commons.
“Just Two of Us” project brings the artist’s bright, jagged brushstrokes to life, intertwining the colorful forms with the green space of Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center’s wooded commons.

This project, like most of Grosse’s large-scale installations, incorporates massive sculptural features that allude simultaneously to an imaginative vista. The artist’s primary means of expression is painting, and the thrust of the work is rigorously abstract. Over the past decade, she has developed a unique working method and a singular approach to painting that has taken the medium far beyond its traditional domain.

"Just Two Of Us" is a series of massive multi-coloured sculptures which have taken over the Brooklyn's MetroTech Commons plaza, looking like the architectural remains of a post-punk psychedelic society. It’s bright, bold and inescapably interactive!
“Just Two Of Us” is a series of massive multi-coloured sculptures which have taken over the Brooklyn’s MetroTech Commons plaza, looking like the architectural remains of a post-punk psychedelic society. It’s bright, bold and inescapably interactive!

Grosse’s rather novel practice has been compared to graffiti and street art. Typically she designs intricate but ramshackle constructions using mounds of dirt, found objects and fabricated abstract shapes in wood, Styrofoam or plastic. Once the construction is in place, she dons protective gear that resembles a hazmat suit and wields an industrial spray gun. She moves through the environment—usually on foot, but sometimes on scaffolding or suspended from a crane—covering almost everything in her path with brilliant, saturated color.

The sprawling and spectacular site-specific exhibition by German artist Katharina Grosse at MASS MoCA, “One Floor Up More Highly,” in 2012 was awesome. The jagged white slabs thrust skyward from waist-high mounds of dirt, studded with real twigs, gravel and rocks. These, plus huge resin boulders, were all spray-painted in great swathes of outlandish hues: hot pink, deep red-orange, Day-Glo green, yellow and blue. The piles of sprayed dirt had the rich density of tons of dried pigment, a feature that recalled certain Yves Klein works of the 1950s.
The sprawling and spectacular site-specific exhibition by German artist Katharina Grosse at MASS MoCA, “One Floor Up More Highly,” in 2012 was awesome. The jagged white slabs thrust skyward from waist-high mounds of dirt, studded with real twigs, gravel and rocks. These, plus huge resin boulders, were all spray-painted in great swathes of outlandish hues: hot pink, deep red-orange, Day-Glo green, yellow and blue. The piles of sprayed dirt had the rich density of tons of dried pigment, a feature that recalled certain Yves Klein works of the 1950s.

Learn more about Katharina Grosse.