Katharina Grosse - Black Bed SessionConcert & talk
KATHARINA GROSSE: BLACK BED SESSION
For the opening weekend of her exhibition Black Bed, artist Katharina Grosse appears in a unique live music/talk event surrounded by her own artworks.
Black Bed Session consists of two parts. First will be an artist talk with curator Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen, where they will discuss her work, practice and the new exhibition at MUNCH. Directly after, Grosse will be joined by her long-term collaborator, the musician Stefan Schneider, as well as by the musicians Farida Amadou and Maria Bertel. Together they will perform a special live set of improvised electronic music.
Black Bed Session programme:
14:30: Doors open
15:00: Artist talk: Katharine Grosse with Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen (curator, Black Bed)
15:25: Live performance: Katharina Grosse, Stefan Schneider, Farida Amadou, Maria Bertel
16:00 (ca): End
Important information: Tickets include access to the whole museum including exhibitions. Please note that on this day the exhibition Katharina Grosse: Black Bed will be closed to the public until 14.30. It will remain open after the concert is finished.
About the exhibition:
Katharina Grosse is known for expanding the frame of traditional painting, often using a spray gun to transform surfaces and spaces into flowing, immersive works.
Inspired by Edvard Munch since her student days, she has worked at his Ekely studio to create new paintings in dialogue with Munch's artistic practice. The exhibition takes its title from Black Bed, a new site-responsive work reimagining her seminal Das Bett (2004), serving as both homage and a dark counterpart to Munch's The Sun (1912–13).
The exhibition gives insight into a kinship between two artists who, a century apart, share a radical understanding of painting's emotional power.
About the concert:
Katharina Grosse's sonic collaboration with Stefan Schneider goes back many years. They have performed improvised analogue synth music as a duo in many museum and gallery settings, and released two albums, Tiergarten (2017) and Permanent Parts (2024). They treat their synths as living, unpredictable organisms which allow them to drift into unknown territory.
Katharina Grosse is widely known for her spectacular, immersive paintings in which explosive colour is sprayed directly onto buildings, interiors, landscapes and canvas. Working across different scales, surfaces and supports, she stages a visceral encounter with the painted image, disrupting our habitual way of ordering the world.
Stefan Schneider is best known as a founding member of Kreidler (1994-99), to rococo rot (1995-2015) and his collaboration with Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Cluster/Harmonia) 2008-2016). Today he combines the work on his multi-disciplinary label imprint TAL with participation in the fields of contemporary art and music. Schneider has recently collaborated with Garth Erasmus (Cape Town), ORED Recordings (Caucasus), filmmaker Nicholas Humbert (Step Across the Border) and artist Katharina Grosse.
Farida Amadou is a bassist and sound sculptor based in Brussels. Blending free jazz, noise, and deep rhythmic structure, she has become a vital force in experimental music, collaborating with artists such as Thurston Moore and Moor Mother.
Maria Bertel is a Danish trombone player and composer. She amplifies the acoustic details of her instrument to create compositions that draw inspiration from drone and noise.
Katrine Elise Agpalza Pedersen is an art historian and Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH. She has previously worked as a curator and interim director at Kunsthall Trondheim, and was OCA’s curator in residence 2024 at ISCP in New York City. She is the curator of Katharina Grosse’s solo exhibition Black Bed, with Trine Otte Bak Nielsen as Co-Curator.
