Kerstin Brätsch, photo: Andrea Rossetti
Kerstin Brätsch
Artist in Residence 2024
Kerstin Brätsch’s oeuvre spanning almost 20 years can be understood as a pulsating cycle: her ideas and motifs migrate from one material to the other and are continuously developed further. The focus is always on her desire to shake up conventional notions of painting: she works with artist friends, questioning the idea of a signature style. In collaboration with craftspeople, she explores the possibility of translating her work into new materials and techniques, resulting in oil paintings, glass works, marblings, stucco objects, installations, performances, video works and computer-generated imagery. What they all have in common is that they translate the fleetingness of painterly gestures into different states.
In these projects, Kerstin Brätsch sees herself as one of many actors who form a kind of collective “body”. The social aspects of collaboration thus coincide with the material qualities of the artwork. It is, however, also about the metaphysical aspects of art as a medium that reaches beyond the world of human experience: natural elements such as water, fire, light and (seasonal) time increasingly play a role in the artist’s production process. This planetary and geological dimension influences her working method; for example, the weather affects the perception and appearance of her works in outdoor spaces.
For some years now, Kerstin Brätsch has also been expanding the contexts in which she presents her works. In site-specific installations, she has left the classic format of the exhibition space. Her works Fossil Psychics for Christa (2019) at MoMA (New York), MIMIKRY (2022) at the Fridericianum (Kassel) and MEMORY (2021) at the Café du Parc of the LUMA Arles, which can be used as a café, bring together her artistic work and the everyday needs of life. In her project at the Gropius Bau too, Kerstin Brätsch focuses on exchange and encounters rather than the static exhibition of art.
Kerstin Brätsch, MIMIKRY, installation view, Fridericianum Kassel, 2023 © Fridericianum Kassel, photo: Nicolas Wefers
BAUBAU, the play space she designed, is an environment for children’s free play, opening in September 2024 in a prototype version. As a fundamental method of engaging with the world and other people, free play is at the centre of the project, where the imagination and creativity of the young visitors meet Kerstin Brätsch’s artistic works. With wallpapers full of dinosaurs, fantastic creatures, termite mounds and abstract elements, objects and various “loose parts”, she has created a stage for the children’s activities. Inspired by adventure playgrounds and accompanied by playworkers – trained staff with a focus on free play – the rules that usually apply at art venues don’t apply here. The children are invited to use and remodel the spaces and existing objects as they wish. They determine the direction and form of what happens here. BAUBAU thus becomes a fundamental extension of Kerstin Brätsch’s work – an environment for a young audience where more is allowed than forbidden.
Play Day © Gropius Bau, photo: Guannan Li