Female Power with Katharina Grosse, Bharti Kher and Annie Morris
2019 was my year of discovery. I became a mother, I took a step back from a busy gallery life and I finally opened my eyes. I felt powerful in a way I didn’t before. Since last year, I have found myself more and more interested in exploring women power through art. Somehow Katharina Grosse, Annie Morris and Bharti Kher all came into my life during a period when I believed that change was happening, a call for authenticity.
KATHARINA GROSSE
I loved this quote by German power artist Katharina Grosse and I find it very appropriate during this time.
“I like to say that art should derail us. Art should arrest our emotions and our ongoing stream of consciousness—and it doesn’t matter whether it does so through discomfort or pleasure. It’s not about a message; it’s about finding an alternative option to our habitual way of thinking”. Katharina Grosse
There isn’t a more authentic artist than Katharina out there. From large site specific installation to immersive paintings in large scale, you can’t simply ignore her. Gagosian did a great job at introducing Katharina’s large scale paintings to the London art scene with a groundbreaking first show. Katharina uses mainly industrial spray guns to apply her bright colours to the canvas or during a site specific installation, so the act of painting is quite fast and pure. Colours rule the whole process with incredible immediacy. Shapes and lines are created partly using cut out shapes coming from cardboard, foam and foils with a stencil technique. You can see some of her unique mixed media painting technique below and also in the video I am sharing.
It’s not only color, of course, but I think color has many amazing abilities. One is that it affects your ability to feel. It gets very close to your senses, like the voice does to a singer, for example, though maybe the voice of a singer can give you more information than the text of the song. Color has the same ability to get very close to you. I also use color to trace the different layers of my movement—it’s a means to show where I’ve been with my painting tools. - From an interview with Paul Laster, March 2017.
KATHARINA GROSSE "Untitled" (2017) Acrylic on canvas - Gagosian's .© KATHARINA GROSSE. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery and the artist
Katharina Grosse has created many interesting site specific museum installations and a special mention is the 2016 project with MoMA, which is featured in the video below.
In July 2016, MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach invited artist Katharina Grosse to transform a decaying former military building at Fort Tilden, Queens
Katharina Grosse - current shows
Gagosian Gallery (Rome) https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2020/katharina-grosse-separatrix/
Koenig Galerie (Berlin) https://www.koeniggalerie.com/exhibitions/31754/at-30-paces-she-could-split-a-playing-card/
Baltimore Museum of Art (USA) https://artbma.org/exhibitions/2020_katharina-grosse-is-it-you-
Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/katharina-grosse/
BHARTI KHER
Bharti's work is culturally and visually fascinating. Fresh from her latest show at the Ireland Museum of Modern Art, recently extended until 2021 - due to the earlier closure for Covid - I would like to reflect on a powerful series that takes inspiration from a quintessentially Indian symbol: the bindi. Born in the Uk and now living mainly in New Delhi, Bharti could see and experience India with a fresh eye and discover new meanings to the everyday objects. What is a bindi? A bindi (Hindi: bindú, meaning "point, drop, dot or small particle") is a coloured dot worn on the centre of the forehead, originally by Hindus and Jains from the Indian subcontinent. For the artist the bindi is a complex symbolic tradition between religion, beauty and domestic environment. Bindi is a sign for your consciousness. Over the years the artist has been using this ready made symbol as a way of seeing.
I first encountered Bharti’s work as part of the Indian Highway exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries. The below piece ‘Untitled’ is a striking composition where bindis of different sizes are carefully arranged in a layered composition. The result is mesmerising.
BHARTI KHER - "Untitled" (2018) Bindis on painted board - Saatchi Gallery. © BHARTI KHER. Courtesy of Saatchi Gallery and the artist
A new major show ‘A Consummate Joy’ is currently on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, see below short video for an overview with the show curator. I particularly like the Virus series and the larger sculptures.
I love when the artist describes the Virus series as an ongoing process that will age with the artists: ‘I try to look at it (The Virus Series) as a timepiece. It’s a time tunnel, it’s a vortex, it’s a peep hole, it’s a womb. It’s a space where you cross axis and I am trying to map a space of the unquantifiable.’ Virus is an ongoing and politically pulsating series spanning 30 years (2010 – 2039).
Algorithm for the time travel (2018)
Pictured here is the stunning artwork exhibited during a residence at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Somerset - Bindis on painted board - © Bharti Kher, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.
ANNIE MORRIS
I was visually seduced by Annie Morris sculptures when I visited last year the newly opened Louis Vuitton store on New Bond Street, created by design genius Peter Marino. Annie's sculptures are deeply personal and I felt an immediate connection to them, they are also very tactile as the colours are alluring. They look precarious and fragile, like we all are now or feel at some point in life. Each stack is created from foam, plaster, sand and raw pigment, the colours are carefully arranged one over the others. I can see that one of the colours is the ultra-marine blue and the matt intense pigments used intensify each colour to the max. I think it will feature in my new home soon.
Annie started creating her sculptures to overcome the loss of a baby, a way to calm a restless mind. The round shape a reminder of her pregnant body and the transformation a woman goes through…I was recently intrigued by her new online exhibition at Timothy Taylor gallery where she is showing specific artworks that were created during the quarantine period when she didn’t have access to her usual materials. Sculptures are presented in a more intimate, small scale and drawings are created on folding booklets, almost like a story that develops in stages.
Current exhibition in London at Tomothy Taylor Gallery: https://www.timothytaylor.com/exhibitions/annie-morris-diaries/
Below are some images of the artist works and her east London studio (picture by Joshua Monaghan), also a recent article on British Vogue about her beautiful home in the south of France, alongside her husband artist Idris Khan.
Vogue article https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/annie-morris-idris-khan-house
Image reference: Stack 9 - Cadmium Red - Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isa, Mumbai.
