I’ve seen photos of Katharina Grosse’s art, but it was so different seeing it in person.
I walked around the outside of the hanging canvases, seeing glimmers of color peeking through. To say it’s massive is an understatement. 50,000 square feet of canvas, suspended and draped from the ceiling to the ground.
When we finally found the entrance, we walked into a different world.
Yes, I have way too many photos of this installation. It’s just so cool! It was such an immersive and calming experience. Even though the colors are chaotic, being inside this massive cocoon of an artwork, I felt safe and comforted and enveloped. The thick, canvas walls muted the sounds outside. The echos of the galleries were gone. Everywhere I looked, I found new corners of a landscape – shifting, oscillating nooks.
So. Cool!
This piece is called “Is it you?”. The title confuses me. To me, it means people can get lost in this piece. It’s so colorful and busy and so large that you blend in with your surroundings.
After I listened to Grosse discuss this installation, she mentioned how
“you are as strange to the painting as it is to you”.
-Katharina Grosse from “Katharina Grosse.” Art Matters from WYPR, 6 March 2020, https://www.wypr.org/show/art-matters/2020-03-06/katharina-grosse
You enter this painting and can interact with it how you wish. I also found it interesting how she discussed how there’s so much information to take in that depending on where you are within the artwork, you have to process and adapt and view it differently. You can experience this art, you can walk on it, through it, around it.
Annika Marthinuss 