Katharina Grosse. Arrels

Internationally recognized for her expansive practice, Katharina Grosse has redefined the field of painting for over three decades, pushing it beyond the canvas into direct engagement with architecture, landscape, and public space. Grosse sees the world as a space for painting. In “Arrels”, she transforms La Llotja into an active field of experience using colour as a force to unify disparate elements, alter perception and generate a multisensory immersion in space.

Grosse makes no distinction between painting, sculpture and architecture or between inside and out, surface and volume, wall and floor, viewer and participant. All is painting. In “Arrels,” the artist is creating a model of a landscape within a historic structure that she cannot touch.

Grosse’s intervention marks a particularly significant moment in her career, as it directly engages with the historical and symbolic dimension of the site in an unprecedented way. Unlike previous interventions in which architecture functioned as a surface, here the site also becomes the subject: the work responds to its history as one of Palma’s most emblematic heritage spaces, its original function as a vital space of exchange, and its open and permeable condition. In the artist’s own words, it is one of the clearest examples to date of integration between installation and architecture.

“Arrels” is a co-production between the Government of the Balearic Islands and Es Baluard Museu. Developed under the curatorship of David Barro, the project’s conception was shaped in collaboration with Christoph Steinmeyer, while overall coordination was led by Jackie Herbst in close collaboration with the artist’s studio.

 

About Katharina Grosse

Grosse was born in 1961 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany and lives and works in Berlin and New Zealand. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, with  exhibitions and major projects at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany (2025);  Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (2025); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2024);  Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany (2020); Baltimore  Museum of Art, Maryland (2020); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019); K11 Art  Museum, Shanghai, China (2018); MoMA PS1, Fort Tilden, Queens, New York  (2016); South London Gallery, UK (2017); Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); Nasher  Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2013); De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art,  Tilburg, the Netherlands (2013); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2011); FRAC  Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2008); De Appel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands  (2006); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2005); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland  (2002); and UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California (2001).

In-situ and public projects include CHOIR (Art Basel Messeplatz Project, Switzerland, 2025); bLINK (Public Art Agency Sweden, Gothenburg, 2025); Canyon (Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France); psychylustro (Philadelphia Mural Arts Project, 2014).