2015.06.03 Wed, by
Color & Space – Ann Veronica Janssens and Katharina Grosse

Ann Veronica Janssens
Esther Schipper (Schöneberger Ufer 65, Berlin) March 6 – April 18, 2015

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid”
König Galerie, St. Agnes (Alexandrinenstraße 118-121, Kreuzberg, Berlin) May 2 – June 21, 2015

Two recent Berlin shows provide competing though equally compelling responses to the production line of abstraction currently dominant, or at least voluble, in New York, and as typified by Wade Guyton and Christopher Wool but rendered bathetic by a sea of lesser talents. Interestingly, neither Ann Veronica Janssens (b.1955) nor Katharina Grosse (b.1961) are directly interested in abstraction, which only forms tangential and subsidiary themes—though nonetheless important—in their respective practices. 

I met Ann Veronica Janssens on the final day of installation at the Esther Schipper gallery; since then I have frequently thought about this deceptively simple show. Formally, Janssens’ minimal sculptures could be compared with various artists, such as American De Wain Valentin (b.1936), Anish Kapoor (b.1954) and even recent sculptures by Roni Horn (b.1955), but her process and purposes differ greatly. Her work is the result of physical and chemical experiments, particularly regarding light and hue, with transparent materials and the experiences entailed when we encounter the resulting objects and situations (the distinction between “object” and “situation” is arbitrary—in truth, they cannot be separated).

Ann Veronica Janssens with

Ann Veronica Janssens with “Magic Mirror (Yellow)” 2015 at Esther Schipper Gallery, March 5, 2015
(photo: Chris Moore)

Ann Veronica Janssens

Ann Veronica Janssens, installation view, at Esther Schipper Gallery (photo: Chris Moore)

Ann Veronica Janssens

Ann Veronica Janssens “Magic Mirror (green)” (detail) 2015 at Esther Schipper Gallery (photo: Chris Moore)

In “RR Lyrae” (2014), an installation involving a circle of 7 wall-mounted spotlights shining into an artificial haze created the illusion/reality of a palpable star hanging in the middle of the darkened room. I saw this work at Art Unlimited at Art Basel last year, and the emotional effect was almost sacral. The works in Janssens’ recent Berlin show also engage with the experience of mass and light within a space, but the register is less theatrical, more personal. Solid glass beams lie on the floor. Sheets of laminated shattered glass lean against walls filtering the light—yellow-green, mauve-violet and orange-pink, depending on where you stand, and reflecting the room’s strip lighting. A clear vitrine half-filled with turpentine colors the liquid surface red. Pulverized blue glass is left scattered on the floor. The works brim with formal and art historical references, but to concentrate overly on this philosophical texture is to miss the point. Each work is firstly an experiment in the physical and chemical aspects of capturing hue, whether in glass, turpentine or air through projection and filtering, rather than dying. Secondly—and the latter cannot be separated from the former—the experiments occur in human space: the physical reaction is objective but its interpretation is human. Much as sunlight is “interrupted” when it shines through a glass panel’s shattered particles or concave lens, these light-carrying objects—teleports of color—interrupt our physical/mental space. The beam of color on the floor is meant to trip you up. At night it is invisible. I would like to see these panels, beams and dust in an ordinary home, to experience how the color injections and light masses affect the physical mind, the collection of atoms and synapses we feel is reality and think is our soul; to watch the room through the sun-drawn breath of day into night.

Ann Veronica Janssens

Ann Veronica Janssens “Aquarium, Acapulco Kiss” 2011 at Esther Schipper Gallery (photo: Chris Moore)

Ann Veronica Janssens

Ann Veronica Janssens “Untitled (Blue Glitter)” 2015 at Esther Schipper Gallery (photo: Chris Moore)

Ann Veronica Janssens “RR Lyrae” (2014), installation view, at Art Unlimited, Art Basel 2014

Ann Veronica Janssens “RR Lyrae” (2014), installation view, at Art Unlimited, Art Basel 2014

Johann König’s new gallery is at the former St.Agnes Catholic church in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. Built in 1967, its Brutalist-Bauhaus architecture provides an awesome stage—indeed temple—for huge new paintings by Katharina Grosse, who currently also has one of the most prominent installations in “All the World’s Futures” at the Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor and featuring 136 artists. The Venice work, “Untitled Trumpet” (acrylic on wall, floor and various objects, 660 x 2100 x 1300 cm, 2015) involves her trademark blasts of sprayed color onto physical surfaces including walls, hung sheets, pieces of old timber and piles of dirt and debris, creating subjective and objective visual shifts of perceived and actual human space, a disruption where the infinitive painting profanes and owns all and any surfaces, challenging any supposed definition of “Abstract painting”. At once a vandalized and freed space, the color stains surfaces and in turn they—fabric and wood, dirt and dust—varyingly exhaust the color of its brightness. The counterpoint is found in Grosse’s paintings on stretched canvas at König Gallery, which hang like the stained-glass windows that the austere church never had. We are free to interpret this through whichever shattered prism we wish, including Germany’s and Berlin’s 20th Century history, or more locally the social (and religious) intersection of Kreuzberg (arguably Germany’s most diverse population), or simply—simply?—as an experiment and commentary on “space” created through overlapping planes of color in two-dimensional art. It is astonishing.

If we take painting as just the application of hue to surface, the possibilities for how we engage with and understand the role of color not as a secondary, decorative element but as fundamental and strategic—physical and chemical, historical and philosophical—the concept, the practice, becomes more than an historical discipline; it becomes an open frame of reference, a game with many exists. This is not new, but obvious. Yet one consequence is that it renders not irrelevant but relatively trivial much current debate on “abstraction”, a term that narrows possibilities while not defining anything. With Grosse and Janssens, the experience of their colored situations is only the start of series of questions where color reigns primarily in stained and filtered memory.

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse “The Smoking Kid” (installation view) at König Galerie, St. Agnes, Berlin (photo: author, courtesy the artist and Johann König gallery)