Year: 2013
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 130.3 cm (78 3/4 x 51 1/4 in.)
Acquired from Christie’s, 2023
Grosse is attempting to transcend painting that exists in space beyond its two-dimensionality. After Lucio Fontana incorporated a dimension that expands into the depths of cracks and Frank Stella liberated painting from the rectangular shape, artists have experimented with various mediums in today’s world where painting no longer solely depends on the surface as the support. The use of aerosol became popular after its introduction in 1970s street culture, but Jules Olitski, known for his Color Field paintings, and Yayoi Kusama, who lived in New York around the same time, had already been using spray guns in their paintings in the 1960s. The act of “spraying” color onto objects has thus been incorporated as a painting medium. In some of Grosse’s works, the dual relationship that emerges by spraying color is visualized. By placing an object that shields the surface from the spattered color, the artist presents absences of color, in other words, she demonstrates an intaglio-like approach to her painting practice. This tendency is evident in this work, where the viewers can imagine the process of gradually shifting the position of something like a paper pattern while spraying color on top. The very areas that were “not colored” in each layer give a “painting-like” quality to elements such as image, shape, and composition. After all, from this perspective, it can even be said that the vivid colors which appear to form the essence of this work, represent negative space within the painting. Grosse overcomes illusionism through this experiment by flipping the positive and negative within the relationship between the figure and the ground in painting. It aligns with Gross’s root of thinking, where she develops her paintings on a spatial scale that does not adhere to two-dimensionality.
