Nils
Grossien

BERLIN STUDIO  1982-1994

West-Berlin in the 80s was full of music, punk and, above all, Neue Deutsche Malerei. People worked two days a week in a bar and spent the other days making art,  making love and drinking. No one thought about the future.  Life was fun and I performed naked on the stage of the legendary SO36 together with the band Der Kulturelle Einfluss. I had several exhibitions, among others in the also legendary gallery ENDART. In 1989 I completed a 40 ton steel/stone work in public space. My daughter Lilli was 8 years old when the Wall came down in 1989 and a different Berlin emerged.

That was the time when I discovered the art of mosaics and met my future wife.

NEW YORK STUDIO   1994-2005

We packed our bags and moved to the East Village, NYC. Soon I found a studio (on Wall Street!) and started to free mosaic from its kitschy burden and bring it into a modern contemporary form. I taught the history and art of mosaic at URBANGLASS, Brooklyn. Exhibitions followed at Robert Lehmann Gallery, UrbanGlass, Brooklyn,  Heller Gallery NY, BROOKLYN MUSEUM,  NY, Broadway Windows, NYU, NY, Shanghai, China, among others. I also started curating pop-up-exhibitions in different venues. 

After 9/11 politics changed in the US, nationalism trumped multi-culturalism. So it was time to pack ours things and go back to the Mama-Blue-Motherland.

HAMBURG STUDIO 2005- NOW

When I arrived in Hamburg, I founded the experimental gallery WHITE TRASH CONTEMPORARY  to expand my concept of art and to offer other artists a place of exchange and presentation. After 64 exhibitions and many fairs,  8 years later,  I decided to end the experiment and dedicate myself to my own art again.

My works are in private collections in Germany, Spain and the United States, i.e. in the collection of Brooklyn Museum in New York City