Description
Kerstin Brätsch (b. 1979, Hamburg, Germany) lives and works between New York and Berlin. Known for her large-scale painting installations, her materially-varied practice destabilizes and expands the definition of painting. She uses painting to explore the ways in which the body can be expressed psychologically, physically, and socially, while questioning the subjectivity ascribed to the figure of the painter. This sculptural, cut-out print draws from Brätsch’s Fossil Psychic (Stucco Marmo) series, produced in collaboration with the Roman artisan Walter Cipriani. Stucco is an ancient form of plaster historically used to imitate marble and other rare stones, a form of “stone mimicry” still found in many Italian and European Churches. Using stucco, Brätsch creates “paintings” that appear to be the result of geological phenomena. The work’s bright colors might recall prescient monsters, fragments from past and future, body parts or ritualistic amulets. Brätsch’s work was the subject of a survey at Museum Brandhorst in Munich in 2017 and she recently finished a permanent commission in the Parc Cafe of Luma Arles and a semi-permanent commission in the Terrace cafe at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Brätsch has worked extensively in collaboration alongside her solo practice, with Adele Röder as DAS INSTITUT, with solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Galleries, London and Kunsthalle Zürich and participation in the 54th Venice Biennale, and with Debo Eilers as KAYA, participating in the 2021 AB 07 Athens Biennial and 2016 Whitney Biennial.