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It Wasn’t Us, 2021
von • by Katharina Grosse Foto: Robert Schittko/Art Beats

www.katharinagrosseinberlin.de

“I painted my way out of the building,” says Freiburg-born

artist Katharina Grosse about her painting It Wasn't Us in the

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin. Over

the past twenty years, the artist has presented numerous solo

exhibitions, including often site-specific pictorial worlds that

expand through the given spaces and also include walls, ceil-

ings, floors or even entire buildings. Over the course of several

weeks, Grosse created a painting without boundaries in the

Historic Hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof, which finally ex-

tended to the exterior façade of the Rieckhallen, which became
part of the Museum für Gegenwart in 2004. With its bright

colours and unpredictable shapes, Grosse’s artwork radically

breaks with the existing order of the museum space – creating

the impression of a kaleidoscopic image. Inspired by the

colours and shapes of nature, the visitors and the built envi-

ronment, the elements are combined in a pulsating image. In

the process, the boundaries between horizontal and vertical

orientation, inside and outside, and the limitations of the sur-

rounding objects seem to dissolve. Depending on the perspec-

tive when moving through the painting, shapes and propor-

tions change in the colourful installation. This creates spaces

that awaken versatile associations and consciously question

and deconstruct our habitual ways of seeing, of thinking

about, and of perceiving the world around us. The title It Was-

n’t Us alludes to the unpredictability and complexity of the art-

work. The brightly coloured, immersive painting was on dis-

play from 13 June 2020 to 9 January 2021.

Foto: © Katharina Grosse und VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021 / Jens Ziehe