White Cube has announced the representation of Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany). Grosse will be jointly represented by White Cube, Gagosian, Galerie Max Hetzler and Galerie nächst St. Stephan.
The artist will open a solo exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, London, in April 2026, following her first presentation with White Cube in 2002 at the former Hoxton Square gallery. A new painting by Grosse will be on view at the gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach this December.
For more than three decades, Grosse has radically reshaped the terrain of painting. In her work, vibrant, sprayed colour extends across interiors, architecture and landscapes, transforming the painted image into a multisensory experience that unsettles our perception of reality. To Grosse, painting does not belong to, in, or on any particular surface; rather, it is a temporary ecology in which artist, site and viewer converge.
Since the late 1990s, the artist has used acrylic paint and an industrial spray gun: a tool that functions as ‘a conceptual extension of the brush’ and that allows her to paint across surfaces and obstacles without interruption, working at a singular scale and speed.
In 1998, she created her first in-situ sprayed work, Untitled (green corner), by painting directly onto the architecture of the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Informed by an earlier period spent in Florence, where the artist became fascinated by the inseparability of fresco painting from daily life and architecture, the work appeared at the junction of two walls as a hovering field of dark green that altered viewers’ perception of surface and volume.
Other seminal works include Das Bett (2004), in which Grosse spray-painted her bedroom in Düsseldorf, along with her furniture, clothes and belongings, and Rockaway (2016), in which she reanimated a derelict beachfront military building on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, New York. Most recently, CHOIR – her 2025 Art Basel Messeplatz commission – transformed Basel’s public plaza with sweeping strokes of magenta that flowed across the ground, clock tower, fountain and fair logo, marking the first time in the history of the project that it took the form of a painting.
Grosse’s studio practice, which encompasses canvases and three-dimensional works, is similarly driven by what she calls an ‘unruly impulse to take over space with painting, to trespass’. With their dynamic gestures and explosive colour, both her canvases and in-situ works bring painting close to the viewer, staging an encounter that is as visceral and physical as it is visual. In doing so, she invites viewers to inhabit, as she calls it, in her own words, ‘a time capsule that takes you out of the logic of consequence or beginning’.
The artist’s solo exhibition ‘The Sprayed Dear’ is currently on view at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany (until 11th January 2026). It will be followed by ‘Black Bed’ at MUNCH, Oslo (25th September – 31st December 2026). Grosse’s work is also included in the touring exhibition ‘Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection’, curated by Cecilia Alemani, at The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, US (until 5th January 2026) and in ‘The Scharf Collection: Goya – Monet – Cézanne – Bonnard – Grosse’ at Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (until 15th February 2026).
