Katharina Grosse: Wunderbild

Katharina Grosse: Wunderbild
5th June, 2025 – 14th September, 2025
HALL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
DEICHTORSTRASSE 1-2
20095 HAMBURG

Katharina Grosse is best known for her expansive in-situ paintings, in which she applies color directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes. These vivid, haptic environments invite a bodily encounter, urging viewers to reconsider their relationship to space and one another.

From June 5 to September 14, 2025, Deichtorhallen Hamburg will present Wunderbild, a major work by Grosse, alongside a new site-specific installation created especially for Hamburg. The exhibition also includes a selection of studio paintings, drawings, and sketchbooks—many of which will be on public view for the first time. A newly produced documentary film will premiere alongside the show, offering intimate insights into Grosse’s studio practice.

Wunderbild

In the 3,000-square-meter Hall for Contemporary Art, Grosse will transform the space with Wunderbild—an expansive painting that integrates sculptural and architectural elements. Spanning more than 60 meters in length, the work unfolds as a monumental enfilade of painted cloth, draped from the ceiling on both sides of the hall.

First exhibited at the National Gallery in Prague in 2018, Wunderbild is reimagined for Hamburg with the addition of a new sound piece composed by Stefan Schneider. This immersive combination of color and sound offers a unique, multisensory experience.

Wunderbild also marks a turning point in Grosse’s practice. It is the only large-scale work in which she has used stencils, creating layered compositions with areas left intentionally unpainted. These empty sections act like windows into imaginary spaces, giving the work an architectural rhythm. The interplay of painted and unpainted surfaces invites multiple interpretations, transforming the exhibition space into a dynamic environment of visual reflection.

“Wunderbild is by far Katharina Grosse’s largest portable painting. There are only a few institutions worldwide capable of presenting a work of this scale. Therefore, we are thrilled to make this spectacular installation accessible to a wide audience this summer at Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Katharina Grosse’s fascinating installations offer something for everyone – from the youngest to the oldest, whether deeply engaged in art or entirely new to it,” — Dirk Luckow, Artistic Director of Deichtorhallen Hamburg

New Work

A further highlight of the exhibition is Earthwork, a newly conceived spatial installation developed specifically for Deichtorhallen Hamburg, located in the rear section of the hall. Here, Grosse transforms the exhibition space into a walkable landscape of hills, turning the ground itself into a canvas.

Painted color extends across the floor and continues organically over sculpted mounds of earth, forming a striking contrast to the suspended fabric panels of Wunderbild. A narrow path winds through this terrain of “unstable grounds,” allowing visitors to engage with the work both physically and spatially.

Studio Paintings, Film, and Archive Materials

In addition to Wunderbild and the new Earthwork, the exhibition features six large-scale studio paintings created between 2005 and 2024—some measuring up to nine meters wide.

The presentation also includes archival materials, such as sketchbooks and drawings, and a new documentary by filmmaker Claudia Müller. Shown for the first time, the film follows Katharina Grosse throughout her creative process in her Brandenburg studio, providing intimate insights into both the physical and mental aspects of her practice.

About Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg, Germany) is widely regarded as one of the most important painters working today, internationally celebrated for her bold, haptic painting style and saturated use of color. Her expansive in-situ works have been commissioned by leading institutions such as MoMA PS1 in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou in Metz. Her work is represented in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Albertina Museum (Vienna), Kunsthaus Zürich, and the Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Katharina Grosse: Wunderbild opens on the 5th of June, 2025 until the 14th of September, 2025 at HALL FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

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©2025 Katharina Grosse