Kerstin BRÄTSCH

Born 1979 in Hamburg, Germany
Based in New York, USA

Kerstin Brätsch’s practice is best described as Painting in the expanded field. Brätsch uses painting to question the ways in which the body can be expressed psychologically, physically, and socially. Her paintings are realized in a range of materials such as paper, mylar, and glass; often using traditional artisanal techniques learnt from master craftsmen to interrogate the status of painting today.
Collaboration also plays a crucial role in Brätsch’s practice: together with Adele Röder she founded DAS INSTITUT in 2007. Their collaborative work often involves creating composite installations, that shift between different scales and media, encompassing paintings, neon works, slide projections, as well as videos and performances.
For the Aichi Triennial, Brätsch will be showing a group of works, derived from her solo work (glass, mylar, marbling) as well as her collaborative work as DAS INSTITUT (wallpaper and video by DAS INSTITUT with UNITED BROTHERS).
The most recent series of works on display, the marbling paintings, feature vividly colored lines and patterns resolving and dissolving into cross sections of faces, body parts, and landscape.
For Brätsch, the presence of a single work or an individual artist, while important, is not the end of the story. Rather, her interest and the core of her practice lies with the exhibition as a whole, which for her is a continually renewing process that acts as a catalyst for communal creation.