Grosse says she does not think that a painted work should be limited to the canvas, and it "has always been multidimensional" for her.

"Even when I was a student, when I painted, I would always paint on different kinds of surfaces and objects very organically, and then add other things," she says.

"A painting is simply a screen between the producer and the spectator where both can look at the thought processes residing on the screen from different angles and points in time. It enables me to look at the residue of my thinking.

"I believe that the artist, the work of art, the site and the viewer are entangled in a relationship of mutual dependence, which gives rise to an ecology."

Grosse began using the spray gun to paint across surfaces besides canvas in the late 1990s.

So, she sprayed dark green on the upper corner of two adjacent walls and also spread it onto the ceiling to complete a work at Kunsthalle Bern, an art exposition hall in Switzerland in 1998.

And she then turned a dilapidated aquatic center in New York into an outdoor installation in 2016, by spraying red and white onto the architecture and the ground it sits on.

The work, reflecting the sunset view of the area where the center is located, was displayed for more than a year.

Grosse's creations show that colors can appear anywhere, "independently and without generating fixed meanings or serving specific functions".

She says: "I want to infuse a certain energy or attention or transformational aspect into a situation or space, without discussion of whether it can be, may be or has a right to be - somewhere."

Those who are new to Grosse's type of painting tend to view her work as graffiti, while the artist says she is doing quite the contrary.

"Graffiti is often writing and marking a claim, that is, marking a border. I am painting over the border, that is, expanding the area rather than closing it off," she says.

"I feel border districts are zones of extremely dramatic theatricality, because that is where highly diverse interests overlap, intertwine and are compelled within a narrow space to engage in competition, to exist in simultaneity."

linqi@chinadaily.com.cn