Transformation is a theme we focus on a lot: the making of something out of what seems like nothing. Resourceful people transmute their circumstance, something they’ve found, to make something with meaning or new uses. Artist Katharina Grosse has done that mightily with the wreckage of Fort Tilden, an army base in the Rockaways that was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.
She did not change the physical structures that were left. Instead, she covered them with washes of red, white, and pink paint. The description reads simply: Untitled / 2016 / acrylic on wall, floor, and various objects.
Even the inside of a structure is painted. It’s as though Grosse envisioned a huge canvas that encompassed the devastation but was not at all limited by it. She imposed a bigger view.
Grosses Rockaway! acknowledges the violence of the natural disaster while transforming it into something defiantly beautiful.
Read more about Rockaway! at AnOther.
