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  • Katharina Grosse at K11 Exhibition, courtesy of Fabio Crovi
  • Katharina Grosse at K11 Exhibition, courtesy of Fabio Crovi
  • Katharina Grosse at K11 Exhibition, courtesy of Fabio Crovi
  • Katharina Grosse at K11 Exhibition, courtesy of Fabio Crovi

Katharina Grosse

in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

I consider the making of my work as a field,
where all existing elements are on the same level.

 

 

Katharina-grosse

Photography by Fabio Crovi at K11

“I consider the making of my work as a field, where all existing elements like color, paint, time, people, myself, the tools, the wind… are on the same level.”
HUO In the last conversation we had, I talked about the importance of Édouard Glissant in thinking about contemporaneity, the reality of globalisation and how the concept of Creolisation is of increasing value – sharing and expanding through exchange between individuals that allows for their identity to grow.
I wanted to revisit this in relation to the gap you describe that is found in your work – the gap that exists in the crossing/juxtaposition of the built structure and the painted one/the in-between we find – and the paradox of their indivisible connection in a given situation. I want to rethink how this gap can present a vessel for new possibilities. As I mentioned back then, for Glissant one has to take a sort of in between state in regards to globalisation; as to reject a total globalisation and simultaneously its counteraction, for both of them carry certain dangers. But the knowledge of both of them can make the in-between a fertilizing space.
Could this importance of the in-between, the pronounced gap in your work be linked to that?

KG My paintings are prototypes of the imagination. They provide models for thinking that can be reenacted and applied to any field. In this sense they also touch on social or political questions. What I ask myself every day is “What would prototypes of possible realities look like if they didn’t reduce complexity in the slightest, but instead celebrated the complexity of simultaneities?”
My prototypes occur without exception only in border areas – or in the in-between. I feel border districts to be zones of extremely dramatic theatricality, because that is where highly diverse interests overlap, intertwine and are compelled within a narrow space to engage in competition, to exist in simultaneity. In border areas, we experience mutually exclusive things in an instant, as a paradox. Borders are negotiation-spaces that have to be created again and again. My prototypes provide models for thinking through border spaces, as it were. How would it be if the borders of objects were not so binding for us? If it were possible for objects to be redefined, to be newly materialized by a constant change of perspective? Would we then not encounter our loved ones differently, our neighbors, strangers or the community?

 

To read the full interview download MUSE  52