Known for her monumental, site-related installations and vivid spray-painted environments, Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse has long challenged conventional ideas of what painting can be – and where it belongs. Whether working with unstretched canvases, entire buildings, or urban landscapes, she approaches each surface as a terrain of possibility, inviting Art Basel to witness the impulse behind her process in a new episode of Meet the artists.

From Grosse’s custom-built Berlin studio, director Maximilan Andereya profiles the artist as she prepares for her largest public work to date, showing at Messeplatz during Art Basel in June. Occupying the plaza with a sprawling and ephemeral urban painting, Grosse expands her belief that painting doesn’t have to last to be powerful – altering our perception of pre-existing spaces, if only temporarily.

Speaking candidly about solitude and the power of scale, she reflects on formative experiences of painting outdoors, and works developed while alone in New Zealand – considering how canvases created away from outside influence acquire new context once exposed to an audience. Painting with speed, yet daubed with philosophical meaning, Grosse has found an expressive channel through which to communicate her own understanding, while inviting new interpretation – as a way to challenge fixed ideas of image-making, and a means of proposing alternatives.

Katharina Grosse is represented by Gagosian (New York, Basel, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Rome), Max Hetzler (Berlin, London, Paris), and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder (Vienna). The Messeplatz project will be visible during Art Basel in Basel, from 19 - 22 June 2025.