Katharina Grosse.

Brendel, Maria Zimmermann

KATHARINA GROSSE

Temporare Kunsthalle Berlin | Germany

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Katharina Grosse's gargantuan shadowbox installation at Berlin's Temporare Kunsthalle (through June 14) comprised four convex elliptical shapes leaning against the interior walls of the hanger-like space, which is itself large enough to park a jet plane inside. In fact, the overwhelming impact of this show at once plunged the viewer into an almost Baroque exercise in perspectival anamorphosis. At first glance, the 30-foot-high ceiling tended to dwarf these huge laminated-foam ellipses, making them appear light and airy. Furthermore, their position at the far end of the hall demanded a slow, theatrical approach just as in Baroque churches, adding to the distancing effect. On the day I visited, sunlight was streaming in the dazzling white interior, making the works' surfaces shimmer and dance. As with everything Baroque, light is important here.

The four elliptical "palettes" were fabricated by a local company from shaped vertical sections, which Grosse later spray-painted with acrylic. The result is a quartet of blurry, dappled, abstract-looking canvases, but more like tagging than non-figurative painting per se. The Berlin-based artist started using the spray-gun technique in a work for the 1998 Sydney Biennale, a departure from her usual technique of painting on in-situ rocks, walls and found objects. And as with her 2009 stuntweed installation at Nuremberg's Neues Museum, her titles are always in lowercase English.

Shadowboxing (painting as "punching at the air") and a negative form of the white cube both surfaced in Grosse's new Berlin show. But the four ovoid screens--two intact, some of which are shot through with holes, while another has spiky incisions along one edge--also recalled a Rubens, Bernini or Monet. Surprisingly, the layers of paint, which are very saturated, lie smooth and thin, hard to isolate as a blue, red or green. No trace of production remains, as we might find, say, in a Rubens. Absent too are the thick streaks of paint that characterize abstractions by Gerhard Richter or Mark Rothko. But like them they impart a sense of mystery, one that lingers long after the visitor has left. Grosse's works beg to be stroked or investigated, an impulse I obviously shared with others given the warning posted at the entrance that requested people to refrain from touching anything.

It's rare these days to come across a painting exhibition that is genuinely atmospheric. As Julia Kristeva once said of Giotto's frescoes in the Cappella Scrovegni in Padua, color can be curative or uplifting--"it can cradle the self." Cognizant of this potential of color, Grosse was originally a member of Leipzig's Neue Wilden school of painting, a neo-expressionist exploration of the modern chromatic experience. Moreover, the canvas, which for centuries has been a privileged cultural field where paint is traditionally applied by hand, is further destabilized by Grosse's spray guns, whose origin lies in graffiti and social revolt. A semblance of this underground movement still remains in one of the work's serrated detailing, resulting in swept-back, pointy fins one might find etched on inner city phat mobiles.

Grosse's gesture, however, did not go unnoticed. Temporare Kunsthalle, ironically administered by Berlin's governing mayor and the minister of foreign affairs, was built with private donations for the express purpose of exhibiting local contemporary art. After all, the city proudly boasts 8,000 artist residents from around the world, yet up till now has offered no purpose-built space to showcase their work, save commercial galleries. The "temporary" hall opened last October, with only a two-year lease, until a permanent space can be found (discussions are still ongoing). But all that was brought to a head recently. The Temporare's board of directors resigned in protest following critical rebuke by politicians regarding the low number of visitors, which is hardly surprising given the high entrance fee for a one-room venue. It is thus ironic that Grosse's show ended up shadowboxing with the very forces that her work has always brought to light.