From 5 June to 14 September 2025, Katharina Grosse is presenting her exhibition ‘Wunderbild’ at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. The exhibition includes an installation that combines painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as a spatial work developed especially for the exhibition. The project is part of a series showing the artist’s latest works and complements the ongoing presentation of selected works on canvas and previously unseen sketches and drawings.
Image above: Katharina Grosse, Wunderbild, 2018 (detail) Acryl auf Stoff / acrylic on fabric, Installationmaße / dimensions: 1.450 x 5.620 x 670 cm and 1.450 x 5.490 x 690 cm, Copyright: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Photo: Jens Ziehe
Katharina Grosse is best known for her large-format, site-specific paintings, in which she works across architecture, interiors and landscapes to create colourful, spatial installations. Her works enable an immediate physical perception and encourage an examination of the relationship to places and to each other. From 5 June to 14 September, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg will be presenting the installation ‘Wunderbild’, one of the artist’s central works, together with a new spatial project conceived especially for the exhibition. The exhibition will be complemented by selected works on canvas as well as previously unseen drawings and sketchbooks. A documentary film will also be shown, providing insights into the creative process behind Katharina Grosse’s work.
Wunderbild
With ‘Wunderbild’, Katharina Grosse transforms the 3,000 square metre hall for contemporary art into an expansive work of art that combines painting, sculpture and architecture. With a length of over 60 metres, ‘Wunderbild’ presents itself as an enfilade of paintings on loose lengths of fabric hanging from the ceiling on two sides. Originally developed for the Messepalast of the National Gallery in Prague, the artist has restaged the installation in Hamburg and added a sound piece composed especially for the exhibition by Stefan Schneider. The result is a multi-sensory experience of colour and sound.
The ‘Wunderbild’ marks a turning point in the artist’s career. This is the first time Katharina Grosse has worked with stencils on such a large surface. The resulting empty spaces within the complex layered painting act like windows to imaginary spaces and lend the work an architectural character. The result is an interplay between the sprayed and unsprayed passages, which leaves room for personal interpretation and turns the work into a place of reflection.
New work
Another part of the exhibition is an earth work at the back of the hall – a new work developed especially for the exhibition in the Deichtorhallen. For this, the exhibition space is transformed into a walk-in hilly landscape, with the earth serving as a painting surface and forming a contrast to the large-format, hanging fabric panels of the ‘Wunderbild’. The painting covers almost the entire floor area and continues seamlessly on the mounds of earth. A narrow path leads through the painting and allows visitors to experience the work on uneven terrain.
Canvas works, Film and Archive material
In addition to the ‘Wunderbild’ and the earth work, five large-format canvas works from the years 2005 to 2024 as well as archive material consisting of sketchbooks and drawings will be presented for the first time. A documentary film by Claudia Müller accompanies Katharina Grosse in her studio in Brandenburg and provides insights into the process of creating her studio paintings as well as the physical and mental aspects of her artistic work.
About the artist
Katharina Grosse (born 1961 in Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany) has been internationally recognised in the art world for more than 25 years. She is best known for her large-scale painting installations, which have been shown at MoMA PS1, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin and the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, among others. Her painting is radical and unbound in its dimensions as well as in its materiality and temporality. Her works examine the presence of colour and reality and encourage reflection on the physical experience of art. Katharina Grosse challenges her audience to scrutinise their own gaze and to examine habitual ways of seeing and thinking..
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Thursday, 5 June – Sunday, 14 September 2025
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm
WHERE?
Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Deichtorstr. 1-2
20095 Hamburg
