December 30, 2013
Katharina Grosse
"Wunderblock" at Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas among the 13 Most Memorable Shows of 2013
Architect Magazine
From Katharina Grosse's paint-splattered works in Dallas to Mike Kelley's mobile-home tribute to Detroit, some of the best architecture and design exhibits of 2013 weren't by architects at all.
If you missed German artist Katharina Grosse’s "Wunderblock" exhibit, you missed "the classiest acid trip you can take," as Dallas Observer art critic Jamie Laughlin described it. Taking inspiration from Abstract Expressionism and urban graffiti, Grosse spray-paints vibrant stains onto all sorts of surfaces: walls, ceilings, fiberglass sculptures, piles of dirt, seemingly everything but a canvas. Not the first artist who comes to mind for a show inside Renzo Piano’s beautiful Nasher—but the risk paid off. "In the end, Grosse didn’t spoil the travertine. Instead, her piece includes an elongated sculptural form that transcends from the interior of Piano’s light-filled galleries out into the garden," writes D Magazine blogger Peter Simek.