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October 5, 2022
At Fondation Louis Vuitton starting on October 5, 2022, the public can view Canyon, a fresh commission by Katharina Grosse. This exhibit follows those by Olafur Eliasson, Ellsworth Kelly, and Adrián Villar Rojas as the most recent commissions to be inspired by the Frank Gehry building’s architecture.
Composed of eight five-millimeter-thick aluminium sheet “petals” spray-painted with acrylic and connected to a beam, Canyon is a response to the artist’s question: “How can a painting appear in a space with no floor and no walls, where air, light, and energies circulate?” It is a reference to the characteristics of the “canyon” (the name given to the void that is visible inside the Fondation Louis Vuitton building from the ground up).
The artist has used a pulley to raise a sort of cut-out sail in a nod to Frank Gehry’s glass facade—a ship anchored to a cascade—resulting in a tense interaction with the architecture. The artist and the architect have had a tight working relationship since the project’s conception, and they have engaged in a vigorous discussion about how to employ color in an existing structure.
Canyon can be seen from all of the floors of the Fondation. The sculpture, which is composed of curves and countercurves, defies gravity by fusing grandeur with grace in a sort of dance with the structure.
This commission is an extension of two new interventions by Katharina Grosse last spring: Splinter (2022), part of the “Color in Fugues” exhibition in Paris; and Apollo, Apollo (2022) in Venice, part of the Fondation’s “Hors les Murs” [off-site] program and the 59th International Art Exhibition,Venice.
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About the artist Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse has gained recognition on a global scale since the late 1990s as a result of her massive, site-specific spray painted artworks. She extends far beyond the confines of a frame or canvas, encompassing the floors, walls, ceilings, and all other existing materials to create pictorial landscapes that appear to desire to change the world. Her gigantic interventions are frequently magnificent and vividly colored.
Her recent exhibitions and on-site interventions include: “Rockaway,” MOMA PS1’s “Rockaway!” program in Fort Tilden, New York (2016); “Asphalt Air and Hair,” ARoS Triennial, Aarhus (2017); “The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Meters, Then It Stopped,” Carriageworks, Sydney (2018); “Wunderbild,” National Gallery, Prague (2018/2019); “It Wasn’t Us,” Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2020-2021); “Chill Seeping from the Walls Gets between Us,” Ham – Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki (2021-2022); “Shutter Splinter,” Helsinki Biennial (2021); “Apollo, Apollo,” Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia, Venice (2022); “Splinter,” Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2022); “Destroy Me Once, Destroy Me Twice,” Roskilde Festival, Denmark (2022).
Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi
75116 Paris
France