2023-09-26
Colour Fireworks: Katharina Grosse’s Work in the Reinhard Ernst Museum
Mission accomplished! With great care, a team from Derix Glasstudios have safely installed the ton-heavy yet fragile glass panels of Katharina Grosse’s work “Ein Glas Wasser, bitte” (A Glass of Water, Please) in the museum. Learn all about this highly complex and exciting undertaking, and how we mastered the challenge.
What are the difficulties of bringing in such a heavy and fragile work of art?
A Glass of Water, Please is the title of Katharina Grosse’s very first work on glass, which she created in exclusivity for the Museum Reinhard Ernst in cooperation with Derix Glass Studios from Taunusstein.
Find out more about the work’s making process here.
The work spreads over 839 cm in width and 400 cm in height. However, even though the museum’s premises promise one thing above all – size – it is no easy undertaking to transport the glass panels from the trailer to their destination. Especially not when this task is carried out on a construction site. We held our breath as the fragile glass panels were transported by an assembly robot into the museum. The individual parts were then inserted into the designated holders with millimetre precision.
Museum founder Reinhard Ernst attended the installation work on site: “Seeing Katharina Grosse’s work being installed in the museum foyer was a special experience for me. The creation of this work, from the first draft to the finished artwork, took over two years. A highly complex process that I followed with great interest. The installation of the work marks an important milestone in the completion of the museum.”
Where will I find the work of art in the museum?
Katharina Grosse’s spectacular work on glass forms a translucent wall between the museum foyer, which is open to the public, and the colour lab on the ground floor, the room dedicated to workshops for schools and youths. The work consists of eight panels, whereby the front and the back can each be regarded as independent surfaces of a translucent painting. This is because the luminous colours of both sides interact with each other thanks to the transparent quality of the material. But that’s not all: when light falls on the glass, colour fields are projected onto the floor or other surfaces. In this way, the viewer is immersed in a sea of colour that detaches itself from its carrier medium and takes over the room.
“Colour’s ability to transform, to disguise, to alienate, and also to transcend body boundaries and body zones – this can all be experienced – and I think children can relate to it tremendously” the artist explains about “A Glass of Water, Please”. She is convinced that mixing colour has an appeal that stimulates and inspires.
