Katharina Grosse's 'Mumbling Mud' installation explores painting's origins at Shanghai's Chi K11 Art Museum

Katharina Grosse presents 'Mumbling Mud,' a large-scale installation at Shanghai's Chi K11 Art Museum through February 24. The exhibition, split into five sections, investigates myths about painting's beginnings and ends. Grosse, known for pushing painting beyond traditional frames using sprayguns, creates abstract color explosions on various surfaces. Her work spans from studio canvases to architectural interventions, including corporate facades and abandoned military bases. The installation's sections include 'Underground' with spraypainted soil piles, 'Silk Studio' with printed silk curtains, 'Ghost' featuring a skeletal Styrofoam sculpture, 'Stomach' with colored fabric labyrinths, and 'Showroom' with painted furniture. Grosse's artistic origins trace to childhood games of erasing shadows with an invisible paintbrush, echoing but reversing Pliny the Elder's tale of Kora of Sicyon inventing painting around 650 BCE. Recent scientific research suggests Neanderthals may have created cave paintings in Spain over 64,000 years ago. The artist previously lived in Shanghai in 1981 when her father taught at Tongji University. The exhibition title references both pigment origins and a Cantonese expression meaning 'a ghost eating mud.' Grosse served as painting professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2010 until earlier this year, working from her Berlin studio while creating site-specific installations worldwide.