Monika Grzymala, installation view, the Locker Plant, August 2008

Monika Grzymala

Monika Grzymala is a Polish-born artist who’s lived in Germany for many years, primarily in Hamburg and now Berlin. She makes installations that might be described as a kind of three-dimensional drawing, and her signature material is tape, tape of all colors and kinds: packing, masking, adhesive, upholstery, etc.

Grzymala has made her tape installations at many different venues in Europe and the U.S. Each work is site-specific–created in response to the conditions and configuration of a given space. For her show at the Locker Plant, Grzymala used tape, paint, and an assortment of dead trees she collected around Marfa. The trees, leafless and stark, reminded the artist of drawings; incorporating them into a show allowed her to expand her method of drawing in space. The trees were broken up and placed in a kind of semi-circle occupying most of in the Locker Plant’s front room. Starting in the room’s center and moving to the west, the branches became more and more brightly hued. This room-wide movement through color reached a crescendo with the branches rearing up against the front window to the west: here, on both tree limbs and tape, was a range of super-saturated yellows, oranges, pinks, purples, blues, and greens.

Monika Grzymala was born in Zabrze, Poland in 1970. She moved to Germany with her family in 1980. She studied stone sculpture and restoration in Kaiserlautern from 1990 to 1994 and in 2001 earned a degree in fine art from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. In 200809 she created new site-specific works for the Hayward Gallery, the Drawing Room, and other venues in the United Kingdom.