archive / Sardinia

"In the summer after her first year in art school, Katharina Grosse went to Sardinia with a friend from school, a young Italian woman. She was on a strange mission that she still can't really explain, She brought with her a -tiny set of watercolors-. The two friends stayed for weeks in a -roofless house- that belonged to a percussionist, a friend of Grosse's friend. They brought 38 liters (10 gallons) of white paint and 38 liters (10 gallons) of Mediterranean blue paint to supplement the watercolors., and spent their days painting a large scale coastal rock with what Grosse calls -the movement of colors- while taking photographs of the progress and occasionally fending off Sardinian boys. This was Grosse's first temporary outdoor painting installation, made painstakingly over -many, many days- with small watercolor brushes. The rock was important, but so too was the setting: an unorthodox painting in relation to, and transformative of, its surroundings. Especially important was moving off the canvas into the world and onto things." ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Gregory Volk, Katharina Grosse, 2020 by Lund Humphries⁠⠀