The arrival of contemporary art in the form of postmodernism brought a rapid rise in the genres of photography and installation, and a decline in painting. This study focuses on the revival of the latter genre, since the late 1990s, as “painterly in...
The arrival of contemporary art in the form of postmodernism brought a rapid rise in the genres of photography and installation, and a decline in painting. This study focuses on the revival of the latter genre, since the late 1990s, as “painterly installation,” while attempting to analyze the “spray paintings” of Katharina Grosse(1960 ), which explore possibilities for expanding the realm of painting.
Since her exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 1998, German artist Katharina Grosse has become established as a leading artist in the field of painterly installation, developing a genre all of her own known as “spray painting.” In these works, Grosse experiments with new approaches to the “spatialization of painting,” by combining painterly elements with the unique properties of architectural, sculptural and photographic media, while actively introducing nonpainterly materials such as PVC balloons, clay, wood, styrofoam and fiberglass.
In order to place Grosse's spray paintings within the context of their genre, this study begins with an examination of changes in the conventional definition of painting from after the Renaissance to the postmodern era. Painting has become established as a form of art whereby a phantom space of unlimited depth influences, and is influenced by, its actual surroundings by way of the practical surface of its canvas. But with the emergence in the late 1960s of installation art, based on physical, objective elements of actual space, painterly expression lost the power to convince. In spite of this trend, Grosse produces her own unique paintings that follow certain conventions of traditional painting while adopting the forms of installation art. Her method thus explores the possibilities of painting.
Chapter III examines Grosse's early works, dating from before her spray painting period, before analyzing the characteristics of media involved in spray painting. It concentrates in particular on the properties of the industrial spray gun, the main instrument used in these works, examining it within the context of its influential relationship with the concepts of “index” and “formless.” By using a spray gun instead of a brush, the traditional medium of painting, Grosse maximizes the “instantaneity” of the genre. Because the spray gun allows the artist to connect with the canvas or surface in the absence of any physical gobetween, it frees her from the constraints of the canvas, recording her pure perspective and thus, ultimately, enabling both conceptual and physical expansion of the painting space.
The final chapter focuses on the unique spatial structures created by spray painting, attempting to analyze the characteristics apparent in them and the experiences they offer viewers. While painterly installations are formed in actual space, they use chromatic illusions to create extraneous effects whereby reality and illusion constantly cancel each other out. By recycling her pieces, moreover, Grosse creates strained relationships between existing and new works, offering us experience of the discontinuous view of time that is inherent to painting. Grosse causes the viewer to become absorbed not only psychologically but also in terms of perception, by inheriting the German Romantic landscape tradition and developing it in three dimensions. At the same time, by emphasizing the natural light entering the exhibition space, she enables the viewer to move away from the painterly world. Grosse's spray paintings thus enable coexistence between incompatible elements, while the resulting third space embodies contemporary painting's potential for expansion.