Katharina Grosse

Garish, aggressive, dazzling and sublime all at once. That is Katharina Grosse’s work in a nutshell. This Berlin native’s paintings are not things but sites. For the past decade, Grosse has been applying swaths of bold colors directly to walls and floors using powered spray guns. More than art for art’s sake, her installations are specifically paint for paint’s sake, as paint and painting take on an immaterial quality that seemingly obliterates its architectural support.

Her installation at The Renaissance Society, entitled “Atoms Inside Balloons,” will be designed around the gallery’s windows and its 30-foot high neo-gothic ceiling. Using industrial air-compressed paint guns and buckets of paint - in iridescent copper, cadmium orange, primrose yellow, ultramarine, and violet - and twenty 5 to 10 foot balloons, she will transform the gallery walls, floor and ceiling into a walk-in painting. This will be an exuberant and stunning exhibition.

The opening reception is on Sunday April 29, 2007

Katharina Grosse