KATHARINA GROSSE | APOLLO, APOLLO
Collateral event of the 59th international art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
ESPACE LOUIS VUITTON
23 APRIL – 27 NOVEMBER 2022
“Painting leaps into an unknown sense of reality, as present as a house
as versatile as a spirit”, Katharina Grosse
The Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia is displaying a whole new installation by German artist Katharina Grosse. As Collateral Event of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, this presentation has been produced in the framework of the Fondation Louis Vuitton “Hors-les-murs” programme, which unfolds at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka, realizing the Fondation’s commitment to mount international projects and make them accessible to a broader public.
In 2013, Grosse began broadening her artistic scope by printing photographs on fabrics, like polyester and silk. In a dynamic dialogue with the architecture, her wall-sized prints – as seen at China’s chi K11 art museum in Shanghai (2018) or, most recently, at Finland’s HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2021) – display an imagery related to her painting practice, such as photos of her paintings, studio views or her paint-steeped hands. From May this year, her work will be shown in La Couleur en fugue exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris; and this autumn, an original work commissioned by the Fondation in dialogue with Frank Gehry’s architecture will be installed on-site.
ESPACE LOUIS VUITTON
23 APRIL – 27 NOVEMBER 2022
“Painting leaps into an unknown sense of reality, as present as a house
as versatile as a spirit”, Katharina Grosse

In 2013, Grosse began broadening her artistic scope by printing photographs on fabrics, like polyester and silk. In a dynamic dialogue with the architecture, her wall-sized prints – as seen at China’s chi K11 art museum in Shanghai (2018) or, most recently, at Finland’s HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2021) – display an imagery related to her painting practice, such as photos of her paintings, studio views or her paint-steeped hands. From May this year, her work will be shown in La Couleur en fugue exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris; and this autumn, an original work commissioned by the Fondation in dialogue with Frank Gehry’s architecture will be installed on-site.

In the Venetian context and imaginative world – Fortuny fabrics, Terrazzo mosaics, omnipresent water and reflections – the metallic fluidity and hued intensity of Apollo, Apollo (a title that works as a mantra with polysemic connotations and condenses and combines mythology with the conquest of space) take on special resonance here. The surface reflects visitors’ movements and contributes to the quintessentially Venetian mirror effect. Apollo, Apollo blends the transparent with the opaque, letting light filter through, creating a gateway to a dreamlike world in which visitors question their own perceptions of reality and illusion.

As if in a technological reversion to Stone Age hand-imprints, the selfsame artist’s hand that withdrew from the actual production of a work such as Apollo, Apollo now comes back into play. Printed paint in the shape of hands and folds of fabric combines with the gathered metal mesh, gliding and slithering down from wall to floor like a viscous liquid. What we see is a toxically glittering, image-bearing skin, whose delicate yet resilient materiality resists any immediate identification.

© Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
© Images Jens Ziehe, Courtesy Louis Vuitton
© Video www.art-beats.de