Katharina Grosse: The Bedroom

With the installation The Bedroom, Katharina Grosse returns to a key moment in her artistic practice. It was in 2004 that Grosse painted over her bedroom in Düsseldorf with spray paint, covering the bed including pillow and blanket, the furniture, the floor, the clothes lying on it, a pair of headphones, boxes, books, and walls. In an interview, the artist recounted:

‘Yes, my bed was the first thing that I sprayed over; then the other elements accrued, which introduced a narrative structure and posed primal questions. The bed is indeed a totally archetypal piece – everyone knows what it is, what happens when one lies down, when one dreams. For this work, I identified a very specific elemental situation that we all know and share.’ ¹

Das Bett, 2004, was a turning point, at once a destruction and a new beginning. The tailored suit, for example, which had been sprayed over, could now no longer be worn. At the same time, however, the space underwent a strange transformation. While objects have appeared in pictures since the beginnings of art, they now became the support and surface of a form of painting that was carried out on their backs. The act of painting, performed by Grosse in one sweep, left its mark as a current of energy. The spray gun replaced the brush. Both are among the painting tools regularly used by Grosse.

Katharina Grosse’s painting has since continued to evolve: from the large installation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2011 to Asphalt and Hair in Aarhus in 2017. If the history of painting were told along the metaphors of ‘window’ and ‘door’, Grosse’s works would be part of the latter. The difference lies in the perceptual standpoint. When we look at a window, we are faced with a different place from which we remain separate, regardless of whether we see a detail of the landscape or if its view is obscured by blinds. If, on the other hand, you face a door, you can grasp the possibility of crossing over or entering something else.

Isn’t that the essence of the bed, too? This place where we sleep, dream or simply toss and turn dreamlessly has long written history. In the 19th century, the court painter Adolph von Menzel drew his unmade bed in chalk, and more than a hundred years later Robert Rauschenberg painted on the quilted coverlet of his bed. In Katharina Grosse’s work, the paint has spread from the bed and thus forms a new surface. It is not the first time that a new idea has arisen from this place. After all, where did the American writer Edith Wharton, the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, write? In bed.