Katharina Grosse — Déplacer les étoiles — Centre Pompidou Metz — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 2 months: June 1, 2024 → February 24, 2025

Katharina Grosse — Galerie Max Hetzler The Max Hetzler gallery presents, for the first time in its Parisian space, the work of Katharina Grosse (1961), a major painter in... 2 - Bien Critique

This summer, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is giving pride of place to Katharina Grosse in the solo exhibition Shifting the Stars. This major project will present a spectacular work in the Grande Nef: a huge painted drapery, covering 8,250 m² and spreading as far as the Parvis in a cloud of colours. The installation The Bedroom will also be showcased in the Forum, where Katharina Grosse explores the archetypal nature of the bed through a visual narration of universal themes.

‘My bed is the first thing that I painted with a spray gun; then other elements accumulated, introducing a narrative structure while examining major themes.

The bed is indeed a totally archetypal piece — everyone knows what it is and what happens when we go to bed, when we dream. For this work, I identified a very specific elementary situation that we all know and share.’1 In 2004, Katharina Grosse radically transformed her bedroom in Düsseldorf with spray paint, covering the bed, the floor, the walls and objects, in an installation that marked a fresh direction in her career that introduced new dimensions. This work, reactivated for the Forum at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, will create a dialogue between the intimacy of the bed and the monumentality of the architecture.

For more than thirty years, Katharina Grosse has been using a spray gun to create her vast immersive paintings. Inspired by Renaissance frescoes during a stay in Florence, she incorporated architecture into her art, adopting a three-dimensional approach. Her in situ works play with walls, corners, floor and ceiling, both embracing and challenging the architecture, generating surprising tensions in the process.

Katharina Grosse’s installations are always integrated into the surrounding site, and her creation for the Grande Nef will be no exception. In the lower part of the gallery, greenery will be introduced in the form of ash trees and hornbeams, their trunks and stumps wrapped in immaculate linen. This decor serves as an introduction to the exhibition, forming a bridge between the human and plant worlds and paving the way for a complete immersion.

In the Grande Nef, which is a majestic space soaring to a height of 20 metres, the artist will be reinventing a vast installation that she originally created for the Carriageworks in Sydney. Here, 8,250 m² of fabric will be suspended from the ceiling, forming enormous knots that transform the space into a vast drapery. This work will offer visitors a unique experience: that of being able to physically pass through a painting. Openings in the canvas will make it possible to enter a sanctuary with undulating walls, becoming immersed in a world of colour and movement. Dashes of bright colour will abut diffuse haloes, the folds of the fabric revealing views of dazzling whiteness. The work will be disconcerting and surprising, creating a deep and powerful effect. By turns an intimate refuge and a theatre set — recalling that the Grande Nef hosted Picasso’s stage curtain design Parade in 2012 — it will invite viewers to actively participate in the work.

The exhibition aims to condense emotions and stimulate a desire for change.

Katharina Grosse’s painting combines artistic and urban space, spreading out from the heart of the museum to the Parvis. ‘From this positive and negative experience, my intention is that we develop the desire to initiate a change.’