Still from Katharina Grosse: On the Edge of Something Else (2021). Open in Lightbox

The renowned contemporary artist Katharina Grosse, whose exhibition Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions is on view this fall at the Kemper Art Museum, is known for large-scale artworks that explore and expand the physical properties, material presence, optical effects and aesthetic potentials of color and paint. She was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in August 2020 for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. In the resulting half-hour video, Grosse reflects on central elements of her work: color, place, and structures; social responsibility and the role of art; and the significance to her of having grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, under the dark shadow of its recent history.

Select Quotes

On traveling: “I like to get to know a new place. I like to be a stranger to a place—to come as a person that is not part of a place, a space, a location…. So being abroad became a very important part of my studio life.”

On her youth: “When I woke up in the morning, I would see shadows in the room and I would imagine a paintbrush to paint them away. I was very convinced of things even though they couldn’t work. And I was very convincing even though my results did not match my conviction. Sometimes my surroundings wouldn’t agree and I was surprised. I was truly imagining something that maybe wasn’t visible. I was always very confident in terms of art. Without reason really.”

On her audience: “I don’t know whether or not I can describe myself as outgoing. I like to be by myself; I have no problem being by myself for days and days and days. But I do believe that I make the work for somebody else. I don’t think about public as such, but I absolutely want it to be seen. And I think it has to be loud and noisy.”

Camera:          Niclas Reed Middleton

Editing:            Klaus Elmer

Production:    Marc-Christoph Wagner

Copyright:       Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2021

Support:          Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond

About Louisiana Channel

Louisiana Channel is a not-for-profit website of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, that produces art and culture videos on an ongoing basis. An integral part of the museum’s development as a cultural platform capable of engaging a new generation in its cultural heritage, in an intelligent present, and in an ambitious future, Louisiana Channel extends the importance of art and culture to the internet.