In the Gallery: Katharina Grosse⁠ at White Cube Bermondsey | White Cube

Why It Matters

Grosse’s fusion of colour, material and space redefines painting as an immersive, experiential medium, influencing how galleries program and how the market values interdisciplinary art.

Key Takeaways

• Grosse emphasizes colour as independent, transformative force beyond surface.
• Installation merges canvas, soil, bronze, challenging spatial perception.
• No sketches; creation driven by immediate visual impulse.
• Multi‑dimensional works invite personal, active viewer interpretation engagement.
• Show connects disparate projects, illustrating interdependent artistic ecology.

Summary

Katharina Grosse’s new solo exhibition, “I Set Out, I Walked Fast,” opens at White Cube Bermondsey, presenting a series of large‑scale, colour‑driven installations that blur the line between painting and sculpture.

Grosse explains that she works without sketches, letting an instant urge dictate form. She treats colour as an autonomous force, independent of the surface, and uses unconventional materials—soil, bronze, and stretched canvas—to create friction between architecture and organic matter, prompting viewers to navigate shifting perspectives.

The artist likens colour to a singer’s voice, saying it reaches the audience before any narrative. In the “soil room,” a bronze object appears to emerge from the canvas, while scale‑altering crumbles make visitors feel both giant and absorbed, exemplifying her emphasis on active, personal interpretation.

By collapsing the boundaries between two‑dimensional painting and three‑dimensional installation, Grosse offers a new model for immersive gallery experiences, signaling a shift toward multisensory, interdisciplinary practices that could reshape curatorial strategies and collector expectations.

Original Description

‘Colour proposes many different possibilities for understanding the world. It is a very direct medium.’ – Katharina Grosse⁠

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Working without preparatory sketches, Katharina’s paintings emerge through a direct engagement with the surface, where thinking, doing and acting converge in a single process.⁠

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In this way, colour operates independently of the ground on which it is applied, transforming what we see and shifting our perception of space.⁠

⁠Find more about the exhibition: https://whitecube.art/KatharinaGrosseBermondsey

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Video © White Cube (Sam Smith) ⁠