WEBVTT

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[Katharina Grosse: Painting with Color]

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[Katharina Grosse Studio, Berlin, Germany]

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I got to write this poem down here on my wrist--

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on my arm.

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Stilton cheese.

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I'm going to make a Christmas card for my
friends.

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One side of the card is going to be a photograph
of a poem that I really like.

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I've written it down on paper,

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and I think maybe it's better on my skin.

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When I started painting, I stopped reading.

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In school, I loved to learn languages and
read things,

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and I really stopped that at the moment that
I started painting.

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And I didn't know why.

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It took me a little while to understand why
I did it.

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It's a poem by an Austrian poet,

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and his name is Ernst Jandl,

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and he's made a lot of really fantastic poems
that are just sound, and...

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yeah, they're super fascinating.

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The linguistic structure urges you towards
a certain order system

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where things follow one another, which is
very linear.

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And I realize that painting does not have
a linear structure;

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but the synchronicity in painting is super
compelling for your thought process.

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[sound of the camera phone's shutter clicking]

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Okay, we have to do it again.

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It's very rare that you read something profound
and fundamental on color.

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Modern critics write about the concept
on what you can see

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or what is being dealt with politically or
socially;

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but, painting being discussed in the realm
of color is never happening.

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Interestingly enough, color is an element
in painting that has always been discussed

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from the 17th Century on--in the big academy
in Paris or wherever--

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as the female, less stable, less clear, and
not so intelligent element of painting,

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whereas the concept--the line, the drawing--

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is more the male, the clear, the progressive,
and intelligent part of the artwork.

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I think that I am dealing with this heritage
in an interesting way,

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because color is such a very very important
spatial feature in my work,

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in relationship to the crystallized and built
and materialized world

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that is part of what I do when I paint in
space.

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I like this anarchic potential of color.

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I see it very clearly that color is actually
taking away the boundary of the object.

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So there is no subject-object relationship
anymore.

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And I think that's maybe what color has the
potential to make us think.

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[Johann König Gallery, Berlin, Germany]

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It's the first time I'm showing works on paper
in a show.

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When I came back from my annual surfing holiday,
[LAUGHS]

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I started with works on paper and I kept going.

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And I found it very interesting

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and I could develop a lot of things very fast.

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All the different actions go together on one
surface,

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so it's a little bit like violence in a movie,

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which kind of accelerates time and compresses time.

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So, shortening the process of thinking and
acting.

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Also, it's without resistance to work on these
small formats

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as opposed to the large pieces where the material
resistance is very strong

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and makes the painting less fluid and mobile.

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What I'm doing with my work is to kind of
grasp some of those

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fast thoughts that run through my brain,

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and maybe painting is one of the ways to actually

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make those visible and understandable for myself.