”I’m a sculptress. All my work is about devoting attention to relationships and things.”
We visited German artist Asta Gröting in her fascinating studio that used to house the city busses of Berlin.
“My path into art? My mother showed me how to create things. She handed me materials, and she transferred her enthusiasm for the material and her perseverance to me. So, I slowly found my way around and developed my own style.”
Asta Gröting’s work, since the 1980s, has embraced various media, from sculpture and drawing to performance, video, film, sound art, and art in the public domain. In works that span these different media, several thematic focuses have emerged, such as the connection between trauma and architecture or reflections on personal power relationships, some of which recur throughout her career, while others are delineated by reference to specific series.
“My generation was raised by a generation of parents who either took part in the war or had experienced it. I wanted to confront that.”
“I went to Berlin in 1993, where I saw those destroyed, shot-up facades. At first, I started photographing them. We all know what those facades have seen. Nazi Germany, that gruesome German history, and the era of the Iron Curtain that followed. I kept thinking about that, about the history in it, about the traumata, about the violence inside it, about the destruction, about the war.”
“Sometimes it can take me decades to find the right technique.”
Despite the diversity of her oeuvre, Gröting always draws us into her way of seeing. Her films and sculptures are interested in looking intently with a microscopic focus at surfaces, appearances, and effects to discover what lies beneath them. As the art critic Kirsty Bell stated: “Each piece seems to be seeded in the question, what is the nature of x?”
“I think art doesn’t have a task. I really hate it when it has a function. I should be free.”
Asta Gröting (b. 1961 in Herford) lives and works in Berlin. She studied sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and has been a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig since 2009.
A selection of Gröting’s major solo exhibitions include Centre Pasquart in Biel/Bienne; KINDL – Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin; Kunstraum Dornbirn; Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe; n.b.k., Berlin; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Marta Herford, and at Lindenau-Museum Altenburg. Important group exhibitions include, among others, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Paris; James-Simon-Galerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Kunsthalle Bielefeld; 22. Bienal de São Paulo, the 8th and 14th Sydney Biennale, and the 44. Biennale di Venezia.
Gröting has earned several awards, including the Gerhard-Altenbourg-Preis given by Lindenau-Museums Altenburg (2023); Preis der Bayrischen Landesbank International S.A. (1996); Otto-Dix-Preis, Gera (1994); Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (1991); A.&W. Grohmann Fellowship, Baden-Baden (1990), Schmidt-Rotluff-Fellowship (1998); Stiftung Kunstfonds (1988).
Asta Gröting was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her studio in Berlin in May 2024.
Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Edited by: Signe Boe Pedersen
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling, and Fritz Hansen.
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