Katharina Grosse. In Conversation with Klaus Dermutz

The book cover for Katharina Grosse In Conversation with Klaus Dermutz, showing a close-up of hands covered in colorful paint.

The book cover for Katharina Grosse In Conversation with Klaus Dermutz, featuring a close-up of hands covered in thick, colorful paint.

An open book showing two pages of text about the artist Katharina Grosse. The left page, numbered 6, is titled Foreword. The right page, numbered 7, has two sections titled The Publication and Wunderbild. Both pages feature black serif text on a white background.

An eye-level view of a large, vibrant art installation in a gallery with stone columns and arched windows. The installation features massive tree trunks and tangled roots spray-painted in bright blue, yellow, orange, and purple, set against a similarly colored, draped fabric backdrop.

A table of contents page from a book. Sections listed include Foreword by Dirk Luckow, Wunderbild about exhibition views at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, and Conversations, which is a list of ten chapters with titles that are full-sentence quotes. The page concludes with Dedication and Acknowledgments and Photo Credits. Page numbers are aligned to the right for each entry.

An outdoor landscape with several railroad tracks in the foreground under a blue sky with white clouds. Beyond the tracks, an overgrown hillside and a concrete wall are unexpectedly covered in a vibrant hot pink color, contrasting with the surrounding green trees and a tall, rusty utility pole.

A view from inside a train, looking out a rounded window at a railway track and an adjacent embankment. The soil, lower bushes, and tree trunks on the embankment are completely covered in a vibrant, bright red-orange powder, creating a stark contrast with the green trees in the background under a pale sky.

A long-exposure photograph of a corner building at dusk, bathed in a vibrant green light. The large storefront windows glow with a fiery, abstract pattern of red, orange, and black against a purple twilight sky. In the dark foreground, light trails from a passing car streak across the road.

An art catalog page with a large, circular abstract painting on the left and a column of text on the right. The painting is split between a smooth upper half with blended shades of purple, green, and pink, and a rough, textured lower half made of crumbling, off-white soil. The soil section has a jagged, decaying edge with holes. A caption below reads: Untitled, 2008, acrylic and soil on canvas, Ø 190 cm.

A two-page spread from an art book. On the left, a tall, vibrant abstract painting shows layered, folded shapes in bright green, blue, orange, and purple spray paint, with long drips of color running down the white canvas. On the right, a block of text is titled with the phrase, The fold is a great element, and discusses the artist's work with balloons and volume.

An overhead view of a massive, immersive art installation in an industrial hall. Enormous swaths of fabric with vibrant, flowing, tie-dye patterns in rainbow colors are draped from pillars and the ceiling, covering the floor and creating a colorful canyon for visitors to walk through and explore.

An art gallery installation featuring a vibrant, colorful landscape on the floor made from mounds of powdered pigments in shades of green, blue, yellow, and orange. A path winds through the installation. On the white gallery walls in the background, two large, abstract paintings with energetic, multi-colored swirls are displayed.

A two-page book spread. On the left is a close-up photograph of a pile of rocky, earthen material covered in vibrant blue and reddish-pink pigments that bleed onto a smooth surface at the bottom. The right page features a large quote at the top, I am on an equal footing with all the elements, followed by several paragraphs of text.

Inside a large hall with high, vaulted ceilings, two artists in full protective suits are spray-painting a massive, abstract art installation. The entire floor is a sea of swirling, vibrant colors, and large, multi-colored sculptures rise from it, with one artist on a ladder adding more paint.

A two-page spread from a book, showing pages 72 and 73, with two columns of black text on a white background. The top of the left page has a large headline that reads, Arrivals and departures move me the most emotionally. The text is an interview about art, train stations, and public art.

An aerial view of a long, abandoned building on a sandy beach, its roof and the surrounding pavement covered in a massive, swirling abstract splash of red and white paint. The ocean and dunes are visible in the background.

A page from a book featuring text on the left and a photograph on the right. The photo shows a young woman, Katharina Grosse, in 1982, sitting cross-legged on the ground in a sunlit forest. Behind her, a large white sheet of paper is stretched vertically between two trees, serving as an outdoor art installation.

A wide-angle view of a large gallery with a high, trussed ceiling, filled with dozens of massive, multicolored spheres. The giant orbs, in vibrant shades of purple, green, yellow, and pink, are suspended at various heights above the concrete floor, where a few people walk among them, dwarfed by the scale of the art installation.

A two-page book spread. The right page features a photograph of two people on a cherry picker spray-painting a single-story building and the ground below with vibrant red and white paint under a clear blue sky. The building's roof is covered in wide red and white stripes, and the ground is a sea of bright red. The left page contains text describing the art installation.

The back cover of a light gray paperback book, viewed from a slight angle against a white background. The cover features a descriptive text about artist Katharina Grosse, a barcode with an ISBN, and logos for the publisher Hatje Cantz and the exhibition hall Deichtorhallen Hamburg at the bottom.

An open book displays a two-page photograph of a monumental art installation within a vast, high-ceilinged industrial hall. Two continuous, massive banners covered in vibrant, abstract, multi-colored paintings are draped from the ceiling on either side of a central walkway. The fabric creates a flowing, canyon-like path, and a tiny human figure walking in the distance emphasizes the artwork's immense scale.

An open book displays a grainy, two-page photograph of a street corner at dusk. A modern, dark green building is illuminated by its large windows, which glow with a warm, orange-red light, backlighting graffiti on the glass. In the foreground, a streak of light from a passing car cuts across the dark road under a twilight sky.

A book titled Katharina Grosse In Conversation with Klaus Dermutz, shown against a white background. The cover art is a close-up photo of two hands. One bare hand is covered in red, yellow, and green paint, while the other hand, wearing a white glove, wipes it with a cloth.

An open book on a white surface. The left page displays a vibrant, close-up photograph of a rocky, textured material colored with red, orange, and bright blue pigments. The right page contains black text, beginning with the large quote, I am on an equal footing with all the elements.

Katharina Grosse. In Conversation with Klaus Dermutz

€ 28.00

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Contributions by: Katharina Grosse

Edited by: Klaus Dermutz

July 2025, 244 Pages, 64 Ills., 64 Photos

Paperback with Flaps

142mm x 210mm

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5948-9

HATJE CANTZ VERLAG
Mommsenstr. 27
10629 Berlin
Germany
E-Mail: contact@hatjecantz.de

According to Article 9(7) of the GPSR Regulation, no additional security information is required for books without supplements or special functions.

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Over a period of two years, Katharina Grosse and author Klaus Dermutz met in the artist's Berlin studio to conduct a series of very concentrated, lengthy conversations. This volume brings together ten in-depth interviews that delve deeper into central themes of Grosse's artistic work, such as the haptic image, the border, reversal, repetition without origin, interruption, the visible and the invisible, and time.

KATHARINA GROSSE (*1961 in Freiburg i. Br.) has held professorships at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin (2000-09) and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2010-18). Her works are represented in numerous international collections. Most recently, the Albertina in Vienna presented her solo exhibition Why Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle, 2023-24) and currently the Centre Pompidou - Metz is staging three large-scale in-situ works (Déplacer les étoiles, until February 2025). Grosse lives and works in Berlin and New Zealand.

KLAUS DERMUTZ (*1960 in Judenburg, Austria) is an author and publicist in the fields of visual arts and theater. Since 1990, he has published in Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Theater heute, and others; from 2001-09 he was co-editor of Edition Burgtheater. He has written numerous books on theater, e.g., on Andrea Breth, Otto Sander, Klaus Michael Grüber, Christoph Marthaler, Peter Zadek; he has also published of a volume of conversations with Anselm Kiefer.