Carriageworks today unveiled a major new commission by renowned German artist Katharina Grosse of a site-specific installation representing the third in the Schwartz Carriageworks series of major international projects. The world premiere of the work titled The Horse Trottted Another Couple of Metres, Then it Stopped is presented free to the public at Carriageworks from 6 January as part of Sydney Festival 2018 and continues until 8 April 2018. Grosse’s exciting new work envelopes Carriageworks, responding to the unique industrial architecture and grand scale of the heritage building.
Carriageworks Director Lisa Havilah says: “We are honoured to be working with Katharina Grosse on the most ambitious single-artist commission Carriageworks has undertaken. This represents a special opportunity for Australian audiences to experience Katharina’s extraordinary vision and transformative beauty through this major commission that will be presented exclusively at Carriageworks.”
Anna Schwartz, Director and Founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery commented: “I am delighted to be supporting the third major international visual arts project in the Schwartz Carriageworks series, with this exciting new commission of work by Katharina Grosse.”
Grosse is best known for her works of kaleidoscopic colour and epic scale, transforming space by breaking out of the traditional boundaries of painting, and engaging visitors as both observers and participants.
For Grosse, painting is an experience in immersive subjectivity, from her canvases and sculptures to her in situ works, painted directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes. Working with a spray gun, she implements multi-dimensional visual effects over surfaces and textures to create sublime and otherworldly environments. She first introduced voluminous fabric into her painting in 2014.
Katharina Grosse explained: “I was fascinated by the thought of folding space. I was interested in taking this vast surface and shrinking it by folding or, actually, hiding the entirety of what’s there. I understand a painting as something that, as we view it, travels through us and realigns our connections with the world.”
Working directly on site at Carriageworks, Grosse enveloped the Public Space in more than 8250 square metres of suspended fabric—draped, knotted and hung across and through the architectural elements of the building—using a palette of raw colour to create a vast painting over the layers of folds. Visitors will be able to enter this total environment and experience the transformation of Carriageworks historic structure.
The Katharina Grosse commission is the third in the Schwartz Carriageworks series of major international visual arts projects. BresicWhitney is a major partner of Carriageworks and the presenting partner of Katharina Grosse. This project is proudly supported by Sydney Festival, City of Sydney, and Goethe-Institut Australia.
Abouth Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse was born in 1961 in Freiburg/Breisbau, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin. She is internationally recognised as one of the most influential and inventive visual artists of our time, and her work is featured in the collections of many of the world’s leading institutions. Recent exhibitions include “Constructions à cru,” Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005); “Atoms Outside Eggs,” Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto (2007); “Hello Little Butterfly I Love You What’s Your Name,” ARKEN—Museum for Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen (2009); “One Floor Up More Highly,” Mass MoCA, Massachusetts (2010); “Third Man Begins Digging Through Her Pockets,” MOCA, Cleveland (2012); “Two younger women come in and pull out a table,” De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, The Netherlands (2013); “WUNDERBLOCK,” Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2013); “yes no why later,” Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); and Museum Frieder Burda, Germany (2016). Grosse’s site-specific installations include Untitled, 11th Biennale of Sydney (1998); Untitled, Toronto Pearson International Airport (2003); Picture Park, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2007); psychylustro, Mural Arts Philadelphia (2014); Untitled, Facebook headquarters, Menlo Park, CA (2015); Untitled Trumpet, 56th Biennale di Venezia (2015); Rockaway! for MoMA PS1’s “Rockaway!” program (2016); and Asphalt Air and Hair, ARoS Aarhus Triennale (2017).