Katharina Grosse’s exhibition “Das Bett” at Parisian @galeriemaxhetzler

Bed can be positioned as an archetypically structured presence in the human mind. It is placed there by the unspoken, indisputable rule of simply being, within its own materiality, stillness, and lack of ambiguity of its form. Almost on the border of oblivion, bed belongs purely to the selection of items, our daily reality is composed of. We sleep on it, lay and toss around aimlessly, cry, and make love. Unable to move freely after an operation, Matisse developed his acclaimed “cut out” technique from there.

Nonetheless, with the passage of time, bed as any other piece belonging to the realm of physical reality becomes the natural extension of its owner, a solidified object in one’s personal space. Being kept tidy and neat whilst in the outbreak of growth and productive mentality era and involuntarily allowed to decompose progressively in the case of owners weakening physical persistence to his or her grasping aims, a mental drainage period.

In a broadly comprehended art and literature bed outstretches its relatively mildly acknowledged presence by accompanying both birth and death. Molding itself along to humankind, and ultimately outliving it.

Tracey Emin‘s My Bed exhibits a retrospective recognition of how shapes and evolves the space and its objects, in accordance to the changeability of a person’s mental state. In the true to the core form, what she presents implicitly depicts human vulnerability during the moments of deep depressive instances that encompass the stillness of material objects and how what is around us responds and endures similar processes to the living organisms it exists with.

On the opening of her second personal exposition, in the Parisian @galeriemaxhetzler (the first one being Spectrum without Traces showcased in the gallery’s Berlin location) Katharina Grosse presents her own bed, Das Bett, along with two more painting pieces showcased correspondingly in two different rooms, and as for the third one you must walk to the doors across the street. Whilst first encountering the installation, the viewer’s eyes zoom out instantly. I feel as if trapped in the 0.5 camera mode on my iPhone 12. The eponymous bed is positioned centrally, with daily used objects scattered around it. Yet, its presence gets temporarily lost when collides with the way the whole room is arranged. After a moment one slowly takes in the space, the staggering, the immensity of the spray-painted walls, and the nonchalance of the brush that invaded the scene, disrupted the mundane normality, the norm-core aspect of placed objects. The visual of the bed itself seems as if taken accidentally from an aleatory piece of every day. The personal belongings adorn the bed, gathered there more or less thoughtlessly by the course of living. Books, a lot of books, stacked on top of each other in disorganized columns, clothing thrown carelessly, maybe in a rush, mistreated shoes ( yes, I’m still reminiscing those Tabis), more books, glasses. The image is rough, raw, and personal. The bed, located in the middle, becomes characterized, marked by the breath of an individual being. Yet, what seems to overpower its essence are the tenacious strikes of paint blazing the room’s interior that offer a more transcendental reimagining of the bed, unmistakably highlighting its archetypical value as a form of insouciant guidance. In the whiteness of the room with bed, paint, and its objects one gets caught in a certain perspective, as if unsure of his or her own presence, as if temporarily not being, merely observing the scene. People watch intrigued, inspect the scene carefully, exchange thoughts, and sip wine, Katharina walks around the guests with a friend by her side. I feel a strange sensation of transcendence, the bed is different, its meaning changed, and the paint erased bed’s limitations of materiality.

Also, did someone finally pick up that tormented piece of cloth from the floor?