Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present High noon lumen, a series of new paintings by renowned artist Katharina Grosse, marking her fourth show with the gallery. This exhibition follows a remarkable run of acclaimed solo presentations of Grosse’s work in 2025: the Art Basel Messeplatz commission, her largest project to date, which powerfully united structures and objects in a single painted image; the first exhibition of her early sculptural work, at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and her current show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, which envelops the spectator in an expansive painting that embraces the specific architecture of the site.

Widely known for her spectacular, immersive paintings in which explosive colour is sprayed directly onto buildings, interiors, landscapes and canvas, Grosse paints across different scales, surfaces and dimensions, disrupting our habitual way of ordering the world. Her paintings extend the visceral possibilities of the medium and reflect an ongoing exploration of colour, the body and perception in space. The use of a spray gun allows riotous colour to land clean on the surface and for the artist to scale her reach, responding reflexively to events and ideas that arise as she works.

For the paintings in this exhibition, Grosse uncharacteristically confined herself to a limited range of colours, using primarily orange and green. There is a particular tension between the two – the feverish intensity of the orange and the antagonistic pull of the dark green, with each disturbing the integrity of the other.

As Colin Lang writes in the text accompanying the exhibition: ‘When pressed against one another, these two colors have the uncanny effect of lifting the image off the canvas, suggesting a painting that hovers over its support as opposed to being wedded to it. Thus, Grosse seemingly drives a wedge between what appears on the surface of her paintings and the physical support beneath them.’

For Grosse, the canvas is one surface among a near-infinity of possibilities on which the painted image can land. Just as her large-scale in situ works continually test painting’s ‘go-anywhere’ power, appearing on water fountains, sand, grassy verges and glass facades, the unruly paintings on her newest canvases strain to break free.