Katharina Grosse, mein Schreibtisch, das schneefeld, 2013. Installation view from Kurt-Kurt, Berlin. © Sebastian Schobbert, 2013
Empty shop fronts with faded advertising for long-forgotten kebab spots and late night Späti’s surround the Kurt-Kurt project space in Moabit, the former birthplace of the German writer Kurt Tucholsky. This was the location for Katharina Grosse’s latest Berlin exhibition “mein schreibtisch, das schneefeld” (my desk, the snowfield) and the third in Kurt-Kurt’s “Temporarily Available” exhibition series.
Grosse is a prolific contemporary painter, with an oeuvre that extends beyond the canvas into sculpture and installation. She paints with a signature acrylic spray, in long gestural and expressionistic strokes that cover the surreal environments she creates out of commercial and domestic materials. Carefully arranged wood, steel, fabric and even soil are often all but covered in layers of her florescent spray. A former shop front, Kurt-Kurt is uncharacteristic of the artist’s higher profile installations, which usually sprawl generously across expanses of museum floors.
Nonetheless “mein schreibtisch, das schneefeld” proves to be a good representation of the artist’s strong spatial sensitivity and visual intelligence. Walking into the space you are struck by a dominating mass of large wooden logs stacked up on top of one another like a great pile of tinder. Taken from a massive, recently felled chestnut tree, located in the vicinity of the artist’s studio, the tree continues to maintain its pride – its former age and grandeur are a strong presence in the exhibition space. The room is covered in Katharina’s iconic spray, with several transparent and opaque colours forming into drippy layers and overflowing from the logs onto the ceiling and walls. Still, the exhibition is a demonstration of the artist’s ability to exercise self-restraint: A tight balance is struck between the quantity of paint, colour selection and the modest dimensions of the room. Such restraint allows this work to breathe, and the paint to trace Katharina’s traversal through the space. Framed by the window facing the street, passing residents are invited to peer into the space and gaze at the radiant mass of blue, green, yellow and purple hues. A stark and welcome departure from the drabness of the surrounding greying architecture which maintains the feeling of a no-man’s land, wedged between two historical sides of a rapidly changing city.
The artist was present at the opening, and her fashion sense somehow seemed like an extension of her strong visual aesthetic. As the population of Berlin diversifies, projects like Kurt-Kurt provide an important platform for the ongoing public discourse of urbanisation. The project space aims to distinguish itself from the growing Berlin art world by being responsive to the feedback generated between project participants and the general public. Such an interaction helps the local community to contribute to its urban environment and ensures a healthy balance between art and city.
Text by Tom Kobialka
Katharina Grosse mein schreibtisch, das schneefeld www.kurt-kurt.de
Until 21.09.2013