WEBVTT 00:00:14.007 --> 00:00:15.639 Katharina Grosse: It’s very fascinating for me 00:00:15.639 --> 00:00:18.780 to reset the idea what a painting can be. 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:23.250 It’s not like a formal issue only about volume and color, 00:00:23.250 --> 00:00:27.539 but it’s also how could painting appear in this public space? 00:00:28.182 --> 00:00:29.935 The surface is very rough and clunky, 00:00:29.935 --> 00:00:31.670 and I do something like a watercolor on top, 00:00:31.670 --> 00:00:32.899 which is quite bizarre. 00:00:33.488 --> 00:00:37.370 So it’s actually a very intimate kind of painting, 00:00:37.370 --> 00:00:38.980 but just on a very large scale. 00:00:38.980 --> 00:00:41.220 So it’s as if you’re thinking out loud, 00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:43.040 that’s a little bit how I work. 00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:48.000 And what comes up in the end is a volume floating through this forest. 00:00:50.269 --> 00:00:55.470 I saw the space and had immediately the feeling it could be very, very interesting to work 00:00:55.470 --> 00:00:56.550 with the trees-- 00:00:56.871 --> 00:01:01.750 to make the trees a very and significant part of the overall image that would come about. 00:01:01.750 --> 00:01:08.723 I’m very fascinated by the power of these iconic images like the tree, the soil, 00:01:08.723 --> 00:01:10.112 the landscape. 00:01:11.960 --> 00:01:16.897 The trees are so strict, like little soldiers in that park. 00:01:18.450 --> 00:01:23.270 I thought, if I could place something in between the trees that looks like gigantic driftwood, 00:01:23.270 --> 00:01:26.360 that has come and swept in with some sort of power 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:28.424 that we can’t explain, but now it’s there. 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:39.890 The sheer presence of these things of different size 00:01:39.890 --> 00:01:42.740 makes us think of something that must have happened, 00:01:42.740 --> 00:01:45.245 but we can’t quite say what it is. 00:01:48.190 --> 00:01:52.780 The trees are very fragile and small, but yet they are taller than the work. 00:01:52.780 --> 00:01:56.175 The trees also give a certain scale to my work. 00:01:57.728 --> 00:02:02.209 The buildings around them are quite big and that’s a big challenge for an outdoor work. 00:02:12.371 --> 00:02:18.256 There’s a big team effort needed to do these large sculptural works, especially for MetroTech. 00:02:19.970 --> 00:02:22.610 That was the biggest piece I’ve done ever. 00:02:22.610 --> 00:02:26.842 Eighteen pieces we needed to produce in a relatively short amount of time. 00:02:28.930 --> 00:02:32.068 I made models and then we discussed it via Skype. 00:02:32.550 --> 00:02:34.450 Amaral had to make these works, 00:02:34.450 --> 00:02:35.236 laminate them, 00:02:35.236 --> 00:02:38.001 make them durable and hard with fiberglass and resin. 00:02:39.661 --> 00:02:41.849 We needed people to handle it, to prime it, 00:02:41.849 --> 00:02:45.798 to get it into place to understand how the pieces would work together. 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:06.986 I started to work with my brother three years ago. 00:04:07.976 --> 00:04:09.090 He is an engineer. 00:04:09.572 --> 00:04:14.890 It’s the first time I have somebody in my team who is not coming from an art context. 00:04:15.158 --> 00:04:20.350 He joined us when I was doing a huge project for the Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin 00:04:20.350 --> 00:04:23.980 where we constructed ellipses that were leaning against walls. 00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:26.338 And the ellipses were about 30 feet high. 00:04:27.650 --> 00:04:31.480 We had to work with a boat builder and a structural engineer, 00:04:31.480 --> 00:04:33.898 putting them together and hoisting them into place. 00:04:35.130 --> 00:04:36.530 That was a great moment. 00:04:37.333 --> 00:04:41.190 He has a really great way to connect the theoretical thinking that’s needed 00:04:41.190 --> 00:04:43.289 to understand the engineering process, 00:04:43.289 --> 00:04:45.400 and he knows the language and all the words. 00:04:45.721 --> 00:04:48.480 And then he can still come back to me at the end of the day and say, 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:51.232 look we need that kind of bolt here. 00:04:55.302 --> 00:04:57.697 We were very, very close when we were kids. 00:04:58.875 --> 00:05:02.673 He grew into an indispensable member of my team. 00:05:22.020 --> 00:05:25.541 My parents took us to a lot of things when we were small. 00:05:26.130 --> 00:05:28.160 I was seeing paintings, drawings. 00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:30.310 We would also go to the theatre lots. 00:05:30.310 --> 00:05:33.242 And both my parents are very influential in that respect. 00:05:34.259 --> 00:05:36.320 My mother would draw and paint, 00:05:36.320 --> 00:05:39.150 but also then cook and bring us to music lessons. 00:05:39.578 --> 00:05:41.970 And she didn’t label herself artist. 00:05:41.970 --> 00:05:46.205 I started to tell myself that I actually had a mother who was an artist. 00:05:46.205 --> 00:05:50.145 She was the one to find out that I maybe had visual talent. 00:05:50.520 --> 00:05:53.389 One morning I had done a little watercolor. 00:05:53.389 --> 00:05:56.440 I had copied a black and white photograph from a newspaper. 00:05:56.440 --> 00:05:58.146 She thought it was amazing. 00:05:58.146 --> 00:06:00.000 She urged me to go on. 00:06:02.210 --> 00:06:05.647 My mom would also make us paint the garage walls. 00:06:06.370 --> 00:06:09.090 She would gather all the kids and say, let’s make little drawings and 00:06:09.090 --> 00:06:11.050 see what the big picture could be like. 00:06:11.050 --> 00:06:14.297 It was a natural thing to paint things. 00:06:43.717 --> 00:06:47.099 My work is not idea based, it’s really thought based. 00:06:47.099 --> 00:06:51.190 The thought is a more fluid feel that gets feedback 00:06:51.190 --> 00:06:53.868 and is being changed while I do what I do. 00:06:54.660 --> 00:06:59.363 So there is an overall agreement that I have with myself as I start something. 00:07:01.639 --> 00:07:03.900 That agreement is based on a judgment. 00:07:04.328 --> 00:07:09.250 For example, I want to have two elements coincide that exclude one another. 00:07:09.250 --> 00:07:14.840 How could that work in that painting or in that situation that I have in a gallery 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:17.254 with a certain architectural setup? 00:07:17.789 --> 00:07:22.919 As I work, as I use my painting tools and colors, 00:07:22.919 --> 00:07:29.120 then I am getting an instantaneous feedback by the materialization of that first agreement 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:33.027 that might then change the relationship I have with the agreement. 00:07:35.410 --> 00:07:36.480 All these notions, 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:39.539 the further steps that are changing again and again, 00:07:39.539 --> 00:07:43.289 that is that thought process that I find infinitely interesting, 00:07:43.289 --> 00:07:47.295 that can’t be fixed and written down as I start. 00:07:52.810 --> 00:07:56.819 I wanted to do something for the Nasher that was not a sculpture 00:07:56.819 --> 00:08:02.019 and that was not really using the space as a display space. 00:08:03.545 --> 00:08:06.539 There are two very large glass panels 00:08:06.539 --> 00:08:08.040 and the rest is just walls. 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:09.470 And you could move through this. 00:08:09.470 --> 00:08:12.319 So you, you had the vista through the building, 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:16.912 into the garden and in the garden were plants and sculptures that looked a little bit alike. 00:08:21.784 --> 00:08:25.515 How do you actually make yourself visible in that situation? 00:08:25.515 --> 00:08:31.875 Something like negative space coinciding with super large paint movements. 00:08:32.330 --> 00:08:37.500 Quite amazing that my invitation to a sculpture museum coincides with 00:08:37.500 --> 00:08:40.729 a moment where I wanted to do a negative space of volume 00:08:40.729 --> 00:08:43.908 with a painting sitting on top of that negative space. 00:08:44.470 --> 00:08:48.000 That is a fantastic confrontation of these two thoughts. 00:08:59.218 --> 00:09:05.290 I started to see that experiment as something that would just sit in the space 00:09:05.290 --> 00:09:08.350 as if it was taken out of the box and discarded. 00:09:08.350 --> 00:09:11.769 So I did not want the piece in relationship to other things, 00:09:11.769 --> 00:09:14.019 I just wanted to have it leaning against a wall 00:09:14.019 --> 00:09:19.310 so that it would sit exactly where the wall and the floor meet 00:09:19.310 --> 00:09:23.850 and that kind of joint would be then covered by the thing that I do. 00:09:23.850 --> 00:09:27.839 So you can’t really tell the floor and the wall apart anymore 00:09:27.839 --> 00:09:32.705 because they are in terms of color very close in the Nasher with the limestone and the floor. 00:09:35.730 --> 00:09:39.230 And I did something for them that would move out of the space as well. 00:09:39.230 --> 00:09:43.945 So I wanted something that was inside and was going outside behind the glass panel. 00:10:18.190 --> 00:10:22.690 This is the Kunsthaus in Graz in Austria and it’s an amazing building. 00:10:22.690 --> 00:10:24.306 It’s a bubble. 00:10:24.306 --> 00:10:25.377 It’s a very organic shape. 00:10:26.475 --> 00:10:30.330 And I’m going to do a show there which has to do with 00:10:30.330 --> 00:10:31.899 one of my core questions, 00:10:31.899 --> 00:10:36.540 how can painting appear in space and what do I need to show the painting? 00:10:36.808 --> 00:10:39.269 I don’t want to put walls in the space that then 00:10:39.269 --> 00:10:41.283 enable me to show canvases. 00:10:46.691 --> 00:10:48.600 The metal cage is the roof. 00:10:48.600 --> 00:10:51.930 We made it this way so that I can work in the space from above. 00:10:51.930 --> 00:10:57.089 These Styrofoam blocks are solid walls that I could also possibly paint on. 00:10:57.089 --> 00:11:02.579 Other than the Styrofoam blocks I have no walls that define the space. 00:11:03.701 --> 00:11:08.340 There are no windows except these openings in the ceiling where I have lights. 00:11:09.223 --> 00:11:15.389 I’m using canvas or some very thick cloth, maybe some sort of sailcloth. 00:11:15.389 --> 00:11:16.829 And I want to crumple it. 00:11:16.829 --> 00:11:19.540 And at times I want to make a painting on that surface 00:11:19.540 --> 00:11:20.590 and at other times, 00:11:20.590 --> 00:11:25.592 you can just walk on the canvas or can walk through the exhibition. 00:11:28.671 --> 00:11:31.440 The painting process is all going to be done on site. 00:11:32.538 --> 00:11:36.760 We are trying to find out, how can I build these creases and these folds 00:11:36.760 --> 00:11:37.950 to scale? 00:11:37.950 --> 00:11:42.850 Because I find the space that is coming about by folding things quite interesting. 00:11:44.108 --> 00:11:51.272 I like that you are walking in a structure that is difficult to see as a whole. 00:11:54.267 --> 00:11:58.730 I’m really fascinated by that condition of us being 00:11:58.730 --> 00:12:02.120 in something and at the same time looking at it. 00:12:02.120 --> 00:12:04.495 I think that’s the condition we have all the time. 00:12:04.870 --> 00:12:06.310 That has a lot to do with scale. 00:12:06.310 --> 00:12:10.290 I think that we are able to think so big and at the same time 00:12:10.290 --> 00:12:14.019 we’re actually quite small in relationship to what is around us. 00:12:14.019 --> 00:12:17.410 So you’re constantly changing in size as you walk through. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:22.560 The scale shift in this exhibition is really something that I’m very interested in. 00:12:22.560 --> 00:12:25.784 That, that is also what I thought was in Nasher so fascinating. 00:12:28.890 --> 00:12:31.100 The dirt room downstairs was the only space 00:12:31.100 --> 00:12:34.650 that didn’t have any relationship to the outside garden. 00:12:34.650 --> 00:12:39.440 And upstairs I had the more analytical piece that was actually confronted with, 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:41.784 with the garden and the plants and so on. 00:12:44.622 --> 00:12:46.660 I’m very adventuresome. 00:12:46.660 --> 00:12:49.933 I grew up hiking and climbing in the mountains. 00:12:51.459 --> 00:12:55.940 Later on I started to be very fascinated with the space that you encounter 00:12:55.940 --> 00:12:58.790 in landscape and in painting a landscape, 00:12:58.790 --> 00:13:04.085 because you’re sitting somewhere vast and you have this 360 degree angle around you. 00:13:04.710 --> 00:13:07.278 And then you start to think is there an order? 00:13:07.278 --> 00:13:08.251 What do I perceive? 00:13:08.251 --> 00:13:12.525 And how do I actually design an order for what I’m surrounded by? 00:13:15.631 --> 00:13:18.377 Landscape is an un-bureaucratic space. 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:22.480 The hierarchic shift is so fast in landscape. 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:25.339 Something that was useful a minute ago turns out to be 00:13:25.339 --> 00:13:29.080 not so interesting two steps further to the right, for example. 00:13:29.080 --> 00:13:35.880 So there is a very unstable, very fluid sense for hierarchy in landscape. 00:13:40.057 --> 00:13:42.420 WOMAN #1: I’m really curious to know how the idea 00:13:42.420 --> 00:13:43.710 about the piece came up 00:13:43.710 --> 00:13:46.003 and where you got your inspiration from. 00:13:47.047 --> 00:13:49.250 Katharina Grosse: Everybody knows a tree, one way or another. 00:13:49.250 --> 00:13:51.181 You go into the park or into the woods. 00:13:52.466 --> 00:13:53.760 But something has happened to the trees, 00:13:53.760 --> 00:13:54.850 we don’t know what it is, 00:13:54.850 --> 00:13:56.558 but they are not where they normally are. 00:13:59.690 --> 00:14:03.680 I love what happens to this material and to this image when it’s painted. 00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:05.610 That turns it to something else. 00:14:06.681 --> 00:14:10.009 Something that’s not the tree and at the same time it’s a tree. 00:14:10.009 --> 00:14:11.518 And I love this paradox. 00:14:11.518 --> 00:14:13.930 WOMAN #1: So that’s where the title originates also? 00:14:13.930 --> 00:14:15.820 Katharina Grosse: Yeah, you don’t really know. 00:14:15.820 --> 00:14:21.300 You see something far away and then you think, oh that’s, that looks like a bird. 00:14:21.300 --> 00:14:23.435 And then you come close and it’s a plastic bag. 00:14:24.399 --> 00:14:27.780 And I think this kind of ambiguity is there all the time. 00:14:31.046 --> 00:14:32.500 WOMAN #1: Was it the first time that you have been 00:14:32.500 --> 00:14:34.520 working with this kind of material? 00:14:34.520 --> 00:14:35.092 Katharina Grosse: With a tree? 00:14:35.092 --> 00:14:35.592 Yeah. 00:14:35.592 --> 00:14:36.092 WOMAN #1: With the tree? 00:14:36.092 --> 00:14:39.660 Katharina Grosse: I was starting to be interested in this whole 00:14:39.660 --> 00:14:42.060 tradition of the painted sculpture, 00:14:42.060 --> 00:14:46.600 of the painted 3-D thing you know. 00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:49.570 And I’ve used a couple of these things that are so strong, 00:14:49.570 --> 00:14:51.370 like the dirt or the soil, 00:14:51.370 --> 00:14:53.147 that is so important to our life. 00:14:57.668 --> 00:15:03.977 The woods are really amazing as a structure as all of a sudden this linear thing splits. 00:15:10.215 --> 00:15:13.070 WOMAN #2: So you had a few pieces, how did you put them together? 00:15:13.070 --> 00:15:15.680 Katharina Grosse: You can see, here is a cut. 00:15:15.680 --> 00:15:16.680 That’s the tree. 00:15:16.680 --> 00:15:17.680 This one was put together. 00:15:17.680 --> 00:15:18.751 So it’s all fiction. 00:15:19.447 --> 00:15:21.750 Once you are starting to feel, ah, that’s a real tree, 00:15:21.750 --> 00:15:22.750 you see the cut. 00:15:24.463 --> 00:15:26.132 It’s more like an edited tree. 00:15:26.775 --> 00:15:27.775 WOMAN #2: Right. 00:15:27.775 --> 00:15:28.373 Katharina Grosse: Yeah. 00:15:28.373 --> 00:15:31.501 WOMAN #2: And how did you choose the colors? 00:15:31.501 --> 00:15:34.589 Katharina Grosse: It has to do with the light that you have 00:15:34.589 --> 00:15:35.589 in the space. 00:15:35.589 --> 00:15:36.863 The space is quite dark. 00:15:37.639 --> 00:15:40.329 So I wanted to have something that reflects as well, 00:15:40.329 --> 00:15:42.446 so the yellow was important for me. 00:15:43.570 --> 00:15:45.649 The yellow in front of here does something totally different 00:15:45.649 --> 00:15:47.120 than the yellow behind the roots. 00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:48.120 Right. 00:15:48.120 --> 00:15:49.839 Because it kind of glows. 00:15:49.839 --> 00:15:50.674 WOMAN #2: Yeah. 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.745 Katharina Grosse: The colors I use are so raw, they are not mixed. 00:15:58.130 --> 00:16:02.778 I like this raw, direct thing that they have with your body. 00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:06.293 It’s like voice, like the voice of a singer I think, 00:16:06.293 --> 00:16:08.042 that’s what color very much has. 00:16:09.040 --> 00:16:10.520 WOMAN #1: Yeah, you had a lot to say. 00:16:10.610 --> 00:16:11.882 Katharina Grosse: Yeah, yeah. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:13.594 I had a lot to say, yeah, yeah. 00:16:36.576 --> 00:16:38.962 MAN #1: All the blocks form one large canvas. 00:16:40.459 --> 00:16:44.980 Now that Katharina has painted, we need to put that canvas back together. 00:16:44.980 --> 00:16:49.380 So that’s why lining up the marks of her brushstrokes, 00:16:49.380 --> 00:16:50.380 if you will, 00:16:50.380 --> 00:16:54.711 is very important and actually vital to the sculpture itself. 00:17:03.331 --> 00:17:04.459 Katharina Grosse: Am I a painter? 00:17:04.459 --> 00:17:05.459 Am I a sculptor? 00:17:05.459 --> 00:17:06.357 I don’t know. 00:17:07.174 --> 00:17:09.920 I’m talking to the world while painting on it. 00:17:09.920 --> 00:17:11.170 Or with it. 00:17:11.170 --> 00:17:12.000 Or in it. 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:17.317 Therefore there is a collision of things with the painted image. 00:17:17.317 --> 00:17:21.738 Something comes about by this collision that can’t be taken apart anymore. 00:17:30.289 --> 00:17:33.330 There is the plastic or sculptural thing. 00:17:33.330 --> 00:17:35.830 If I take it away, the painting isn’t there anymore 00:17:35.830 --> 00:17:37.289 and if I take my painting away, 00:17:37.289 --> 00:17:40.270 then this metamorphosis isn’t there anymore. 00:17:40.270 --> 00:17:44.679 So these things kind of stick together, even though they are coming from two very 00:17:44.679 --> 00:17:46.188 distinctive worlds. 00:17:49.772 --> 00:17:53.000 It’s not necessary to decide that you are a painter or a sculptor. 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:57.235 It doesn’t make your work more radical or more clear. 00:18:16.923 --> 00:18:19.520 I totally enjoy to look at things. 00:18:19.520 --> 00:18:21.427 And I want something cool to look at. 00:18:22.039 --> 00:18:24.422 So I make this for myself also a lot. 00:18:25.964 --> 00:18:31.663 I immensely enjoy when doing it what comes out of it during the making. 00:18:33.138 --> 00:18:36.200 I amuse myself, you know, I entertain myself. 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:41.692 But it has to be complex and fun and ridiculous and tricky. 00:18:41.692 --> 00:18:45.859 There, it’s about tricks, that I play to myself and to others. 00:18:46.539 --> 00:18:49.068 I am the trickster really, the painting trickster. 00:18:49.068 --> 00:18:52.430 Don’t believe me, I guess.